App Comparison
TurnZero HQ is built around the social half of Commander: one gathering that splits into several pods under one standings race, a Game Feed the game writes itself with Moments for the plays worth remembering, friends watching the night live from anywhere, TV mode, Personal Mode, Board State, and AI recaps. Mythic Tools is a good card-reference app, scanning any card in any language for Oracle text, rulings, and live prices, attached to a deeply customizable eight-player counter with playgroups, decks, a collection and saved stats. They overlap on tracking and differ on most of the rest.
Best for a playgroup whose night is the thing worth remembering
TurnZero HQ is a social Magic app built around the gathering, not a single game. A join code puts the whole playgroup into one night that guests can join without making an account, and if the room is bigger than one table, it splits into balanced pods that all run at once under a single standings race, reshuffled between rounds, with the host seeing every table at a glance. Life totals move with a tap or a drag, Commander damage stays separate from life loss and is broken out by attacker, and each game writes its own Game Feed of turns, damage and the cards played. Moments add the big plays to it: a photo, a note, or the exact cards involved, tagged to the turn it happened, with reactions and comments from anyone in the group, including friends watching the night live from anywhere. Every deck earns an Elo-style MMR from real results, both globally and inside your playgroup; Personal Mode and Board State cover the games where the rest of the table isn't tracking; and AI writes a recap of each game and the night as a whole. It runs on iOS, Android, and the web, and it's free with a premium tier for the AI extras.
Best for card lookup, prices, and a counter you can make your own
Mythic Tools packs a lot into one free app. Its life counter handles up to eight players across a choice of table layouts, with dedicated trackers for Commander damage, poison, and the Monarch, and an unusual amount of customization on top: art backgrounds, fonts, effects, and animations. Its card scanner is the standout feature: point the camera at a card in any language and get Oracle text, extra rulings, and real-time prices from TCGplayer and Cardmarket, backed by an advanced search and EDHREC links for deckbuilding. It has grown well past a counter: a free account adds playgroups with a group chat, friends, a deck builder with legality checks, collection tracking, a tournament organizer, and saved games with win rates by deck, seat and matchup. Its paid Mythic+ tier scores decks and recommends cards, with one deck scored free.
Blank cells mean we couldn't confirm the feature at time of writing, not that it definitely doesn't exist. Both apps ship often. Check the current version before deciding on the strength of any single row.
Platform note: both apps run on iOS, Android, and the web.
Both apps save games and report win rates. The difference is that TurnZero HQ runs the night itself, as a social event, while it's happening. One join code brings the whole playgroup in, guests included without an account. When there are more players than seats, the room splits into pods that play simultaneously, balanced automatically and reshuffled between rounds, all feeding one standings race across every game at every table, the thing that turns eleven people in a living room into a single night instead of three disconnected games. TV mode puts that on the big screen for the room or a store's Commander night, and anyone who couldn't make it can open the app from anywhere and watch life totals tick down in real time, reacting to the winning play from their couch.
The other half is the part a counter doesn't try to do: keeping the story. Moments let any player post a photo, a note, or the exact cards behind a big play, tagged to the turn it happened, and the rest of the group reacts and comments in the same feed. AI recaps close out each game and the whole night in one of five voices, from a play-by-play commentator to an outright roast. Deck MMR rates every deck from actual results, globally and within your playgroup, and Rate My Deck scores a list against the official Commander brackets before it's ever been played, with upgrade paths including a budget one. Mid-game rules arguments go to Rulings, which answers a question about your actual board with a judge-style outcome and cited sources.
TurnZero HQ also covers the games where nobody else at the table is tracking. Personal Mode runs the full tracker scoped to your own side (life, damage dealt to each opponent, a turn timer, Moments) with no buy-in from the pod, so those games still count toward your decks. Board State turns a once-a-round photo of the battlefield into a confirmed, AI-matched record of what was actually in play, which is how "which cards are really winning me games" stops being a guess. And the MCP server hands your decks and game history to Claude and other AI assistants, so you can ask which deck is overdue for a win instead of digging through stats.
Decks keep a version history: every edit snapshots the list, each game is tagged with the version actually played, and results split per version, so you can tell whether a rebuild helped rather than assuming it did, something a lifetime win rate can't answer. Every game also records who went first, a 1v1 can be played as a best-of-three with its own match record, and the Deck Lab shows what it would take to reach the next Commander bracket. For a store event, a tournament night runs rounds, points and standings across every pod. Mythic Tools' organizer is the stronger pick for a 1v1 bracket, with Swiss or single elimination.
The card scanner is excellent and worth the install on its own. Point it at a card in any language and it comes back with Oracle text, the extra rulings that aren't printed on the card, and live prices from TCGplayer and Cardmarket, with an advanced search and EDHREC links behind it. That's a different job from TurnZero HQ's scanner, which is built to get physical cards into a decklist, your collection or a trade fast, a single card or a photographed stack. TurnZero HQ's card pages price every printing of a card and show which ones you own, but they don't read you the rulings, so Mythic Tools is still the faster answer to "what does this card do, and what is it worth" with the physical card in your hand.
Its counter is also more configurable than TurnZero HQ's in a few places. It seats eight players at one table where a TurnZero HQ pod caps at six. (Both apps handle poison, the Monarch and the initiative.) Its customization also goes further: TurnZero HQ lets a Premium player upload their own deck mat, but fonts, effects, and animations are Mythic Tools' alone. If you want the counter styled top to bottom, that's real and TurnZero HQ won't match it.
If your group has a standing Commander night, especially one that fills more than one table, or has people who want to follow along when they can't be there, TurnZero HQ is built for exactly that, and the social layer is the reason. Live standings across every pod, a shared feed of the night's highlights, remote spectating, and a recap at the end are what make a night feel like a night rather than a stack of separate games, and that's the part Mythic Tools isn't trying to build. If what you want instead is a card reference at the table (prices, Oracle text, official rulings, deep search), Mythic Tools is very good at it, and its decks, collection and saved stats are a real bonus on top. The two overlap least where each is strongest, which is why running both is a perfectly reasonable answer.
Mythic Tools (listed on the stores as "MTG Life Counter: Mythic Tools") is a Magic: The Gathering companion app for iOS and Android that bundles three things: a heavily customizable life counter for up to eight players, a card scanner that pulls up Oracle text, official rulings, and live prices from TCGplayer and Cardmarket, and a free account layer with playgroups, friends, decks, and saved game statistics.
Yes, and it's ahead of most life counters here: you can create a playgroup, add friends, list your decks, and save every game to get win rates and statistics per deck and per playgroup, on a free account. What it doesn't do is run a multi-table night while it happens: there are no live standings across pods playing at the same time, no feed the game writes itself as turns and damage happen, and no way for a friend at home to open the night in the app and watch it.
They're built for different moments. Mythic Tools' scanner is a reference tool: point it at a card in any language and get Oracle text, extra rulings, and current prices, backed by an advanced search and EDHREC links. TurnZero HQ's scanner is built to file cards instead: hold them up one at a time or photograph a pile, confirm each card and its printing, and send them to a deck (main, sideboard or wishlist), a new deck, your collection, or either side of a trade. Prices and every printing sit on the card's own page rather than on the scan. Separately, Board State uses your camera during the game to build an AI-confirmed record of what was on the battlefield each round, which is a different use of a camera again.
Yes to both, alongside life totals and Commander damage broken out by attacker. Both apps also track the initiative and energy, and TurnZero HQ's counter catalog adds experience, rad, the city's blessing, day and night, storm, the Ring, and custom counters a player invents.
Mythic Tools' life counter goes up to eight players at one table with a choice of layouts. TurnZero HQ handles 1v1 through six-player pods plus Two-Headed Giant, and when the room is bigger than one table it splits into multiple pods running at the same time, with balanced auto-assignment and a single standings race across every table.
Easily, and plenty of players would get value from both. Mythic Tools is a strong card reference for prices, Oracle text and rulings, while TurnZero HQ runs the gathering itself: the pods, the standings, the Game Feed, the recaps. They don't conflict, and neither one is trying to replace the other's best feature.
Yes, with TurnZero HQ's Personal Mode. It runs the full tracker scoped to your own side of the table (your life total, damage you deal to each opponent, a turn timer, and Moments) with no buy-in required from anyone else, and the game still counts toward your deck's record and MMR. Board State works in Personal Mode too, so you can log the battlefield round by round even in a pod that's playing off spindowns.
Moments, every pod under one standings race, friends watching live, and an AI recap when it's over. Free to start.
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