All 23 Instant and Sorcery Tutors in Magic Ranked

Last updated on June 28, 2026

Solve the Equation | Illustration by Lie Setiawan

Magic would be an awfully easy game if you always had the card you need the turn you need it, don’t you think? I’m firmly within the school of thought that Magic’s variance is a boon, not a curse, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate some consistency now and again.

That’s where tutors come in. If you can run it in your deck, you can probably tutor for it. While black corners the market for general, find-all tutors, most colors can search for something specific, like instants and sorceries.

Let’s find the best tutors for your spellslinging brews!

What Are Instant/Sorcery Tutors in MTG?

Firemind's Foresight | Illustration by Dan Scott

Instant/sorcery tutors are cards that search your library for instants or sorceries and put them in your hand or allow you to cast them. These are generally blue effects, and they’re often attached to instants and sorceries themselves.

I’m being very specific with this list, and only ranking cards that explicitly state instants and/or sorceries in the text box; it’s okay if they don’t find both card types or they find additional ones, but they must find one or the other at the very least. I'll make expections for cards that fetch spells with a specific subtype if that subtype only appears on instants/sorceries.

Honorable Mention: Goblin Tutor

Though originally printed as a silver-border card, and therefore illegal in basically every format, there's nothing about Goblin Tutor that breaks modern-day rules. Die-rolling was strictly Un-set territory at the time of release, but this could be printed as a black-border card now, and honestly seems like it'd be pretty good, with a one-third shot of missing and a two-thirds shot of being a 1-mana tutor for a relevant card.

#23. Eerie Procession

All arcane cards are either instants or sorceries, which makes Eerie Procession a spell tutor by default, though the narrow restriction makes it a strictly worse Solve the Equation, so not a lot of reason to run the card, even in the stray arcane deck.

#22. Trapmaker's Snare

Same deal with Trapmaker's Snare which is a qualifying tutor by virtue of all current traps being instants or sorceries. It's an even more narrow category of cards than arcane, but traps want to be played at instant speed, and the Snare is itself an instant, so it sets them up nicely. Turning this into a Whiplash Trap, Ravenous Trap, or Summoning Trap at will when it matters sounds enticing, though still not really worth a deck slot unless they print more playable traps in the future.

#21. Frostpyre Arcanist

As fun as it was to build around Frostpyre Arcanist in Kaldheim Draft, this card just doesn't have a home anywhere else. It's too clunky for Constructed, and fetching additional copies of cards makes it mostly null in Commander, aside from the stay Dragon's Approach or Slime Against Humanity deck, where it's still questionable.

#20. Kaho, Minamo Historian

Kaho, Minamo Historian is a rather strange card with a distinct weakness compared to traditional tutors: This is templated such that if Kaho dies, you lose access to all the cards it exiled. But few cards get three tutor targets at once, and you can even reuse Kaho with blink effects if you like. It even color fixes for multicolor decks.

#19. Quiet Speculation

Quiet Speculation is a bit more playable than the arcane- or trap-specific tutors, and honestly not too bad in a dedicated flashback deck. That's a very specific archetype, but there are just so many flashback cards that you can conceive of decks where this is a 2-mana draw-3 with selection.

#18. Chandra, Heart of Fire

Chandra, Heart of Fire is a perfectly fine member of the endless roster of Chandra planeswalkers, but it totally fails as a tutor. Fine card if you disregard the ultimate, but -9 with a starting loyalty of 5 and only a +1 to get there is near unachievable without specific planeswalker support cards.

#17. Kasmina, Enigma Sage

Much like Chandra above, Kasmina, Enigma Sage is a planeswalker with its relevant tutor ability tucked away behind an exhorbitant -8 loyalty ability. However, transferring that ability to other planeswalkers makes it much more achievable, and the color of instants/sorceries you fetch changes depending on the supporting cast of superfriends you have available.

#16. Invert // Invent

Invert’s cute, but we’re here for Invent, a tutor that makes up for its high mana cost by finding two spells with one card. It's neither terrible nor stellar; that cost is awfully high and Invert’s a nearly useless alternate mode.

#15. Lo and Li, Twin Tutors

Since all existing lessons are either instants or sorceries, Lo and Li, Twin Tutors qualifies for the list. Few lessons are good enough to run a 5-mana 2/2 to get them, though the extra noble text and granting lifelink to lessons is all upside that might matter.

#14. Micromancer

Micromancer can be a neat Peasant Cube card. Its surface level is only working with 1-mana spells, but there are plenty of very powerful cards that only cost 1 mana, like Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt; I’m a big fan of Ephemerate myself. The trick is grabbing X-spells with a mana value of 1 and skirting the intended restriction.

#13. Firemind’s Foresight

Firemind's Foresight has a prohibitively high cost, but it snags quite a few spells. It helps that it’s an instant; it’s easy to envision a world where you cast this on the end step of an opponent’s turn, then win once you untap with the three spells you tutored. That said, something this expensive is restricted to Commander, and casual Commander at that. It once saw play in Eternal formats as a follow-up to Omniscience, but most decks have evolved beyond this.

#12. Mystical Teachings

Mystical Teachings works great in a control shell, and it sees a bit of Pauper play in Tron lists that produce more than enough mana to cast two expensive tutors. Commander decks also meet that criteria, and I can see plenty of use in a card that fetches two instants. Despite being the namesake for a tournament-winning Standard deck, it's nowhere near efficient enough to see widespread play anymore.

#11. Invasion of Arcavios / Invocation of the Founders

The scope of Invasion of Arcavios is pretty cool. Not only do you get the library search, but you can wish for a card or even look through the graveyard if your win attempt was previously countered. Commander players can do a lot with a tutor that becomes a win condition.

#10. Wild Research

Gamble-ing with your tutored card is rarely a good idea, but Wild Research offers something unique in exchange: It’s a repeatable tutor you can use as often as you have mana to spend on it. Five mana for a card you might not keep is rather expensive, but it has uses in the right deck—likely one with high-priority enchantments for the other ability.

#9. Sanar, Unfinished Genius

An uncommon darling of some of the better archetypes in Secrets of Strixhaven Limited, Sanar, Unfinished Genius makes the port to Commander just fine, and showcases prepared at its finest. The Wild Idea spell is a pricey tutor, but it's easier to achieve with the Treasure Sanar creates, and you can even “refund” a mana by tapping for a Treasure after casting the prepared spell. Most tutors don't block for themselves and ramp into themselves at the same time.

#8. Spellseeker

Perhaps best known for finding Time Walk in Vintage Cube and Canadian Highlander, Spellseeker is one of those situational cards that excels when you have high value, low-cost instants or cards like Brain Freeze, but it does little without them. If you’re just fetching Lightning Bolt and Counterspell and stuff, this is worse than regular ol’ card draw.

#7. Waterlogged Teachings / Inundated Archive

Waterlogged Teachings is pretty pricey as tutors go, but that cost increase comes for the modality of a double-faced card. Pretty much any Dimir EDH deck ought to consider adding Inundated Archive to their mana base. A land that still does something when you draw it on turn 10 is invaluable, especially in a format as grindy as Commander.

#6. Sunforger

Sunforger is pretty unique: An equipment in Boros colors that fetches and casts instants and sorceries from the deck is something you won't find anywhere else.

You’ll occasionally see this paired with Mistveil Plains to loop the same spell over and over, like a Silence to lock an opponent out of the game.

#5. Bring To Light

Don’t be fooled by the mana cost—Bring to Light is a 5-color card, and it comes with the great boon of casting the spell it tutors for. That gives you tons of flexibility, and it more than makes up for the high mana cost. The ability to find and cast the best card for any given situation—be that a board wipe, a draw spell, or something more esoteric—has made this card the centerpiece of multicolor decks across formats.

#4. Solve the Equation

Solve the Equation costs a fair bit, but it finds whatever you need. This is rarely your first choice as a tutor, but it’s an excellent tool in Commander decks that need redundancy or that want a tutor without resorting to a Game Changer.

#3. Personal Tutor

Personal Tutor looks an awful lot like Mystical Tutor, but the timing and tutor restrictions make it much weaker than the other. That said, it’s hard to argue with such efficiency; it just doesn’t have the same range of interactions as the instant-speed version.

#2. Merchant Scroll

Only blue instants sounds restrictive, and it is, but that’s never stopped Merchant Scroll form excelling. You commonly see it in High Tide lists that combine the titular card with Frantic Search for mana production, but it works in any deck with win conditions that meet its criteria—common combo cards to use it with in Commander include Ghostly Flicker and Brain Freeze.

#1. Mystical Tutor

Mystical Tutor can’t be beat here, wholly due to its efficiency and flexibility. Many of the other instant and sorcery tutors cost more and have greater restrictions, but this one’s best in class. It’s technically card disadvantage since you burn a card to fix your next draw step, but that’s a cost worth paying to set up a win.

Best Instant/Sorcery Tutor Payoffs

Tutors are great because they get you what you need, but how do you actually leverage that into a win?

Combos are the easy answer. Combo decks run so much smoother when you have a playset of Merchant Scroll that effectively allows your High Tide deck to have eight copies of High Tide or Frantic Search or whatever else you want to assemble. On top of making it easier to assemble your combo, casting tutors into additional cards cranks up the storm count tremendously.

Mystical Tutor and Personal Tutor specifically fix the top of your library, which comes in handy with cards like Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge and One with the Multiverse that cast spells for free off the top of your library.

Because tutors find whatever you need, they’re useful parts of toolbox decks that play lots of silver-bullet cards for the right situations that are too niche to play duplicates of; Pauper Tron decks do this with Mystical Teachings to find singleton copies of cards like Heritage Reclamation, Weather the Storm, and Breath Weapon.

Some commanders want you to build with a healthy mix of instants and sorceries, and using these tutors to find the opposite pieces helps maximize their abilities. Think Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy or Hurkyl, Master Wizard, which would both greatly benefit from using a Solve the Equation to fetch up some cheap instant.

Wrap Up

Spellseeker | Illustration by Douglas Shuler

While variance is a net positive for Magic, there’s no reason we can’t strive for greater consistency by including instant and sorcery tutors to find silver bullets or assemble game-ending combos.

What’s your favorite instant or sorcery tutor? Do you enjoy tutors in Magic? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! And check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!