Head-to-head
CardVault Identify vs CardSight AI
Both take a card photo and return structured data. Here's where the published numbers actually differ — coverage, pricing, and what happens when a match isn't confident.
TL;DR
- Our free tier is bigger: 1,000 identifies a month against CardSight's 750.
- We cover 12+ TCGs plus sports and entertainment; CardSight's published coverage is Pokémon and Magic.
- Our top published tier is cheaper per call at scale — $0.0018/request overage on Scale versus CardSight's $0.0020/call — and every paid tier can also buy discounted credit packs for one-off spikes.
- We return an honest needsReview instead of forcing a guess when a match isn't confident, rather than silently returning the nearest neighbor.
How we compare
| CardVault Identify | CardSight AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 1,000 identifies/mo | 750 calls/mo |
| Top published tier | $225/mo — 150,000 calls | $199.95/mo — 100,000 calls |
| Overage rate | $0.0018/request | $0.0020/call |
| TCG coverage | 12+ TCGs + sports & entertainment | Pokémon + Magic (2 TCGs) |
| Honest “not sure” vs. a forced guess | Yes | No |
Ximilar charges 10 credits per trading-card identify — their $549/mo plan buys ~100,000 identifies at $0.0055/request; our Scale plan is $225/mo for 150,000 at $0.0015/request. Their free tier is ~100 identifies/mo; ours is 1,000. CardSight AI's top published tier is $199.95/mo for 100,000 calls with a $0.0020 overage rate — ours is $225/mo for 150,000 with a $0.0018 overage rate, and every paid tier can also buy credit packs priced below even that overage rate for one-off spikes. We cover 12+ TCGs plus sports and entertainment versus CardSight's Pokémon + Magic, and we're the only one that returns an honest 'not sure' instead of a forced guess.
Field by field
Coverage breadth
CardSight's published coverage is Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering — two TCGs. CardVault Identify's catalog spans 12+ TCGs plus sports and entertainment sets, all through the same /v1/identify endpoint. If your product only ever touches Pokémon and Magic, that difference may not matter to you; if it needs to handle Yu-Gi-Oh, Lorcana, One Piece, or a sports card, CardSight's published scope doesn't reach there.
Pricing transparency
Both companies publish tier pricing rather than gating it behind a sales call. CardSight's top published tier is $199.95/mo for 100,000 calls with a $0.0020 overage rate. Our Scale plan is $225/mo for 150,000 calls with a $0.0018 overage rate — more volume included, and a lower per-request rate once you're past it. Every plan and rate is on our pricing page, not behind a form.
Handling uncertainty
This is the field we think matters most. When CardVault Identify can't corroborate a match with confidence, it returns needsReview:true and card:null instead of forcing its best guess — with candidate matches available in an alternates array for a "is this your card?" picker. We haven't independently verified how CardSight's API behaves on an ambiguous or damaged card photo, so we won't characterize it beyond noting it's the one behavior we can speak to concretely for our own API.
Rendering approach
CardSight's public site and docs are built as a client-rendered single-page app. CardVault Identify's marketing pages, including this one, are server-rendered — the HTML a crawler or an AI answer engine fetches is the same HTML a browser paints, with no JavaScript execution required to read it.
Who each is best for
Pick CardVault Identify if…
Teams that need coverage beyond Pokémon and Magic (sports, Yu-Gi-Oh, Lorcana, One Piece, and more), that want every price and rate published up front, or that need an honest "not sure" instead of a confidently wrong card ID on a live listing or a graded cert.
Pick CardSight AI if…
Teams whose product only ever needs to identify Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering cards, where CardSight's published scope already covers the use case and switching wouldn't add anything.
Switching over
Both APIs take the same input — a single card photo, uploaded as a file or passed as an image URL. Switching is a matter of pointing your integration at a different endpoint and remapping the response fields (ours returns name, set, number, year, rarity, language, a confidence score, and needsReview/alternates) — no change to how you capture or store the photo itself.
CardVault Identify vs CardSight AI — frequently asked questions
Is this comparison fair to CardSight?
We only cite numbers CardSight has published — pricing tiers, free-tier limits, and stated TCG coverage. Where we haven't independently verified a behavior (like how their API responds to a low-confidence match), we say so instead of guessing.
Which one covers more games?
CardSight's published coverage is Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. CardVault Identify covers 12+ TCGs — including Pokémon, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Lorcana, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Digimon, Weiß Schwarz, and more — plus sports and entertainment sets.
How much does each free tier give me?
CardSight's free tier is 750 calls a month. Ours is 1,000 identify requests a month, no credit card required.
Can I try CardVault Identify before switching?
Yes — grab a free API key (1,000 identifies/month, no credit card) and the scanner at /scan runs a real identify request against the live catalog.
See it identify a card right now
No sign-up required to try the scanner — real results from the live catalog.