App Comparison
Playgroup.gg and TurnZero HQ are the closest competitors in this category, since both track a whole session of Commander games, and both rate decks against a platform-wide pool. Playgroup.gg goes wider on the stats side: more platforms, ELO player leaderboards, custom Leagues, and a Playscore points system. TurnZero HQ treats the night as a social event: several pods running at once under a single standings race, a shared Moments feed, friends watching live from anywhere, TV mode, Personal Mode, Board State, and AI recaps. This is a fast-moving space, so reconfirm Playgroup.gg's current feature set before relying on this page.
Blank cells mean we couldn't confirm the feature at time of writing, not that it definitely doesn't exist. Both apps update frequently. Verify current features directly before making a decision.
Platform note: TurnZero HQ runs on iOS, Android, and web. Playgroup.gg runs on iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and web, for broader desktop reach.
Playgroup.gg covers more ground than TurnZero HQ in a few specific, real ways. It runs natively on Windows and Linux in addition to mobile and web, which matters if your group plays with a laptop on the table. Its Leagues system is genuinely more flexible than TurnZero HQ's single night-based model. You can group games by night, by pod size, or by format (cEDH, precons, whatever your group plays), and each League gets its own leaderboard and stats. On top of that, it layers ELO-based player rankings and a customizable Playscore system that can reward specific plays, like a well-timed kill or save, and penalize others, like winning off an infinite combo. TurnZero HQ has none of that.
On deck ratings the two are closer than they look. Playgroup.gg's power-level estimate is computed from every game logged with that deck across its whole platform, so it reflects performance against a broad, varied pool of opponents. TurnZero HQ's deck MMR does benchmark platform-wide too. It's reported at global scope as well as scoped to your own playgroup, so you get both the cross-playgroup number and the one that only counts games at your table. The difference is what each is built on: Playgroup.gg's is a power-level estimate, TurnZero HQ's is an Elo-style rating that moves game by game with wins and losses.
TurnZero HQ is built around a narrower idea: one continuous game night, with every game in that gathering feeding live standings (wins, losses, and win rate) for the whole night, not just a report you check after the fact. When the room is bigger than one table it splits into pods that play at the same time, balanced automatically and reshuffled between rounds, all still feeding a single standings race. Deck ratings are an Elo-style MMR built from your own results, reported globally and within your playgroup, aimed at answering "which deck is carrying the table" rather than benchmarking against the wider Magic community.
The larger difference is that TurnZero HQ treats a Commander night as a social event rather than a data set. Moments are a shared feed for the night's highlights: a photo, a note, or the exact cards behind a big play, tagged to the turn it happened, with reactions and comments from the whole group. Friends who can't make it open the app from anywhere and watch life totals move in real time, reacting to the winning play from their couch. TV mode drives a shared display for a living room or a store's Commander night. And AI recaps close out each game and the night as a whole, in one of five voices from straight play-by-play to an outright roast.
TurnZero HQ also covers the nights where nobody else is tracking. Personal Mode runs the full tracker scoped to your own side of the table (life, damage dealt to each opponent, a turn timer, Moments) with no buy-in required from the pod. Board State turns a once-a-round photo into a confirmed, AI-matched record of what was actually on the battlefield, so the question of which cards are really winning you games gets a real answer. And the MCP server hands your decks and game history to Claude and other AI assistants.
Three smaller ones round it out. Decks are built inside TurnZero HQ, with a card scanner that reads a card, or a whole stack in one shot, off your camera rather than by name. Rulings settles a mid-game rules question about your actual board with a judge-style outcome and cited comprehensive-rules sections, saved so the table doesn't argue it twice. And TV mode drives a shared display for the room, which is the feature most likely to matter if you're a store rather than a living room, with tournament mode adding Swiss-style pairing, rounds, and standings when that store is running a real event rather than a casual night.
On the stats side, where Playgroup.gg is strongest, TurnZero HQ has one thing it doesn't: deck version history. Every edit snapshots the list, each game is tagged with the version actually played, and results split per version, so the effect of a rebuild is measurable instead of anecdotal. A lifetime win rate can't tell you whether the current 99 is better than the one you retired in spring. As of this writing, we couldn't find any of the features in these paragraphs in Playgroup.gg's public feature set, though that's worth reconfirming before treating it as settled, since both products move fast and this is the closest matchup in the category.
If you play across multiple formats or pod configurations and want a player leaderboard that reflects skill over time, or a points system you can tune to reward the plays your group values, Playgroup.gg's ELO and Playscore are hard to match. (Wanting to know how your deck stacks up beyond your own table isn't the deciding factor it once was, since both apps rate decks platform-wide now.) If you run a laptop at the table or need Windows/Linux support, that's also a point in its favor. If your group cares most about a clean, live view of who's winning tonight specifically, wants the night's highlights kept somewhere shared instead of in a group chat, runs more than one pod at a time, or is an LGS looking for a TV display for its Commander nights, TurnZero HQ is built around that exact use case. Since this is the closest matchup in the category, it's worth trying both with your actual group before committing because feature sets on both sides are moving targets.
Both track life, Commander damage, poison, and deck records; both rate decks against a platform-wide pool; and both are free to start. Playgroup.gg goes wider on the stats side. It runs on more platforms, and adds ELO leaderboards for players, a customizable Playscore points system, and flexible Leagues that group games by night, pod size, or format. TurnZero HQ is built around the night being a social event: one continuous gathering, several pods running at once under a single standings race, a shared Moments feed for the highlights, friends watching live from anywhere, TV mode for the room, and AI recaps at the end.
None of the three turned up in Playgroup.gg's public feature set as of this writing, which is worth reconfirming before relying on it, since it updates often. TurnZero HQ has all three: a shared Moments feed where any player posts a photo, note, or the exact cards behind a big play tagged to the turn it happened, AI recaps of each game and the whole night in a voice you pick, and a TV mode that drives a shared display for a living room or a store running Commander night.
Both benchmark platform-wide, so the difference is what the number measures rather than how big the pool is. Playgroup.gg's is a power-level estimate computed across every game on its platform. TurnZero HQ's deck MMR is an Elo-style rating that moves game by game with wins and losses, reported at global scope and also scoped to your own playgroup, so you can see how a deck does against everyone and how it does at your specific table. TurnZero HQ also has Rate My Deck, which scores a decklist against the official Commander brackets before it's ever been played, and Board State, which builds a round-by-round record of what was actually on the battlefield when you won.
Yes, core tracking and stats are free. There's an optional 'Playgroup Supporter' pack for cosmetic extras like custom deck themes, alt art, and Discord roles, which doesn't gate any tracking or stats functionality. TurnZero HQ is also free with an optional upgrade tier.
Live standings across every pod, Moments, deck MMR, and AI recaps for your playgroup. Free to start.
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