How RuneBinder works
Where our data comes from, how we set prices and rules, and what we do when something's wrong. In short: card data and prices come from Scryfall, rules from the official Comprehensive Rules, and your collection stays yours.
Prices
Source. All prices come from Scryfall. Scryfall gets the euro prices from Cardmarket and updates them every 24 hours. According to Scryfall, that's the Cardmarket Trend Price; when there isn't one, the one-day average, seven-day average, average price or suggested price, in that order (Scryfall FAQ, checked Oct 13, 2026). We don't convert anything: you see the euros as Scryfall passes them on.
Which printing.
- Cards in your collection: the exact printing from your ManaBox export (by Scryfall ID), with the price of the right finish. A foil gets the foil price, an etched foil the etched price. If Scryfall has no price for that finish, we use the next one: etched → foil → normal.
- A pasted list (deck value, Cardmarket Wants, collection value without ManaBox): only the card name is known. Scryfall then returns the newest printing of that card, and that price counts. An older or rarer printing can cost more; the cheapest printing is often less. The result says so too.
What's not included. Shipping, condition, card language and discounts. A card without a price at Scryfall counts as €0; the total then gets a "+" and we say how many cards have no price.
Date.
- In the tools, prices are fetched the moment you press the button. They're as fresh as Scryfall has them (at most a day old).
- In the app, card data is stored in your browser, with the price from when it was fetched. Your collection shows "prices from [date]": the date of the oldest price. Past 36 hours it says "out of date".
What the price means. A trend price is roughly what buyers pay on Cardmarket. If you sell, you usually get less: a store offers less, and selling to players costs shipping and time. That's why our amounts are estimates and carry a "±".
Buying on Cardmarket
The button to Cardmarket is a plain link, with no affiliate fee. We earn nothing from your purchase. A list for Cardmarket is copied in blocks of at most 150 lines, because Cardmarket allows no more lines per Wants list (Cardmarket help page, checked Oct 12, 2026). Each line is "quantity name", the format Cardmarket recognizes when you paste.
Affiliate links
In the app's card window, next to the Cardmarket button, there is a link to CardNexus, and on the wishlist every card links to CardNexus. CardNexus is a price comparison service that shows offers from Cardmarket and TCGplayer, among others. That is an affiliate link. If you buy at CardNexus within 30 days of your click, we receive about 3.5% of your order total (on a €40 order that's about €1.40), and €1 if you create an account there. You pay nothing extra: the price is the same with or without our link.
- The Cardmarket button in the card window is not an affiliate link. We earn nothing from it.
- Money doesn't decide what you see. Whether a card can be bought through CardNexus plays no part: not in prices, not in lists and not in the order.
- No tracking on RuneBinder. We set no cookie and load no script from CardNexus. We only count how often the button is clicked, without knowing who. What CardNexus does after your click is covered by its own privacy policy.
Card data and legality
Card names, types, color identity, legality per format, images, the Game Changer flag and the EDHREC rank come from Scryfall. Whether a card is legal in a format is read from Scryfall, which follows the official ban lists. The deck checker also counts the cards itself, checks singleton (except basic lands) and color identity.
Lists like "most expensive cards" are sorted by price. Nobody pays for a spot in a list.
Rules and keywords
Writing. The rulebook explanations are written in plain language, in Dutch and English. Card names and keywords stay in English, as on the cards.
Checking.
- Every keyword explanation was checked against the official Comprehensive Rules of September 25, 2026. That check (October 13, 2026) rewrote 46 explanations.
- Whether the list is complete is tested against Scryfall's keyword catalog: 303 keywords (223 keyword abilities and 80 keyword actions) and 70 ability words.
- Ability words have no rule of their own. Their explanation is taken from the oracle text of example cards (October 13, 2026).
- Keywords that exist only digitally (Alchemy on MTG Arena) or in a special set follow the card's reminder text, and the page says so.
- The example cards per keyword come from Scryfall. We fetch them by hand and fix them into the site, so a Scryfall outage can't break the pages.
With every new version of the Comprehensive Rules (usually with a new set) we check the explanations again.
Commander brackets and Game Changers
- Brackets: per the Commander Format Panel's Commander Brackets Beta updates of October 21, 2025 and February 9, 2026. It's a beta guideline; the talk at the table comes first.
- Game Changers: the list comes from Scryfall (the search
is:gamechanger). On October 13, 2026 that was 53 cards. Wizards changes the list a few times a year; we fetch it again when they do. The date is on the brackets page. - The deck checker sets a bracket only from the number of Game Changers: none = bracket 1 or 2, one to three = bracket 3, more = bracket 4 or higher. It doesn't count mass land denial, extra turns or two-card combos. The result says so too.
- Precon pages use the same rule for each precon's bracket, and the same prices.
- The precon checker matches your collection with the precons by card name, without basic lands. What you're missing is priced at the Cardmarket price of the printing in the precon.
Your data in the tools and the app
- Tools (deck value, Cardmarket Wants, deck checker, ManaBox collection, collection value, precon checker) run in your browser and save nothing. Only card names, or with a ManaBox export the card IDs, go to Scryfall. Your file isn't uploaded.
- The app without an account: your collection, decks and wishlist stay in your browser.
- The app with an account: they live in your account, so you have them on every device. Only you can see them, unless you share a deck.
- We count visits without cookies, and per tool only that it was used (with a rough size, like "under 100 cards", or the chosen format), never which cards.
More in the privacy statement.
How often is everything updated?
| What | How often | Where you see the date |
|---|---|---|
| Prices in the tools | On every calculation; Scryfall refreshes every 24 hours | – |
| Prices in the app | When the card is fetched | "prices from [date]", "out of date" after 36 hours |
| Legality and card data | Same as prices | – |
| Precon values | By hand, when we refresh the data | On each precon page |
| Game Changers list | By hand, when Wizards changes the list | On the brackets page |
| Rules explanations | When checked against a new version of the rules | "Last updated" on every page |
| Example cards per keyword | By hand | – |
"Last updated" only changes when a page's content really changes.
Report a mistake
Something wrong, a price, a rule, a translation? Email info@freekvanderhorst.com. Name the page and what you think is wrong. We check every report. If it's right, we fix the page, and "Last updated" changes. What you'd notice as a player is listed in What's new. A price error that starts at Scryfall or Cardmarket, we report there.
Sources
- Scryfall: where the prices come from (Oct 13, 2026)
- Scryfall API: cards and cards by name (Oct 13, 2026)
- Scryfall search syntax,
is:gamechanger(Oct 12, 2026) - Comprehensive Rules (version Sep 25, 2026)
- Commander Brackets, updates of Oct 21, 2025 and Feb 9, 2026
- Cardmarket, Wants lists (Oct 12, 2026)
Last updated: 2 November 2026