The 7 Best MTG Proxy Maker Sites Ranked

Last updated on May 6, 2025

Accessories to Murder | Illustration by Ralph Horsley

Being a collectible card game means, inherently, some cards will be hard to collect. A Volcanic Island will always be an expensive card. How are players supposed to get access to the most powerful spells in Magic when the cards haven’t been printed for over 30 years and the only copies available cost more than your rent? Doing it yourself, of course.

Printing proxy Magic cards is a time-honored tradition and a great way to fill in the gaps. While many opt to order good-quality yet affordable proxies directly from a proxy site, this isn’t the only way to acquire high-quality proxies.

Today, we’ll be examining the best ways to create your own custom proxies and print them yourself.

What Are Proxy Makers?

The Grand Calcutron | Illustration by Sean Murray

Proxy makers, for our purposes, refer to the best sites that allow you to create your own Magic cards. Typically, this is done by uploading your own images and printing them yourself. A proxy maker website gives you the tools to lay out the card and then download it and print it yourself.

Why Make Your Own Proxies?

Magic cards are expensive! The easiest way to get access to those high-power cards is to make them yourself. Need four Ragavan, Nimble Pilferers to playtest your Modern deck? Tired of purchasing and re-purchasing copies of the same Bloodstained Mire and Blood Crypt? Skip the expensive mana base and just print them at home.

Besides saving a quick buck on those spendy cards, printing your own proxies lets you download or design your own pseudo-variant art for your favorite cards. I have a friend who loves his Prossh, Skyraider of Kher deck, but isn’t a fan of the foil-etched variant. Instead, he found an extended art mock-up of Prossh and printed that for use at the helm of his Commander deck.

Finally, printing proxies is the only way you’ll get physical copies of your own custom Magic sets. I have another friend who’s been working on a custom set for years now, but we’ve only ever been able to playtest it in Tabletop Simulator. If we ever wanted to bring the set to FNM and show it off, we’d need to get our hands on some proxy prints.

My Top Pick: MTGNexus

My top pick for crafting your own custom cards is mtgnexus.com. MTGNexus delivers on all the basic functionality you need from a proxy design website and gets in your way as little as possible. Not only does it have a great card creator, it also lets you edit cards as cycles and complete sets, all while leaving commentary on your cards. MTGNexus is the set designer’s paradise, with a great forum for discussing custom cards and proxies. Below I’ve started designing my “Return to Tarkir” set, where I hope to capture the magic of the Return to Ravnica set in a wedge-focused environment (Editor's note: This was pre-Tarkir Dragonstorm).

MTGNexus example of a “Return to Tarkir” mock set

#7. MTGCardBuilder

MTGCardBuilder tool

Mtgcardbuilder.com is another Magic proxy editor site. Its card creator tool has lots of options and makes use of an actual layers system to layout the card’s design. This opens up a lot of possibilities for some truly unique layouts.

MTGCardBuilder tool continued

MTGCardBuilder art layout

My only complaints for MTGCardBuilder are the site’s actual design. With a series of web 1.0 buttons up top and a plain, aggressively white background, the site is a little hard to look at after more than 10 minutes. A dark mode is included, but I still couldn’t see myself using MTGCardBuilder to design an entire set’s worth of cards. Besides this, I generally don’t care for when a site makes me enter the text-code for symbols, even if it’s explained under the drop-down menu.

MTGCardBuilder text code

Also, they made me disable my adblocker, and since I didn’t purchase a premium upgrade, I lost access to a card I was halfway through designing when I switched to dark mode.

Pros:

• Options to adjust art and add/remove layers
• Saves a gallery of your cards
• Custom set symbols included

Cons:

• Unappealing website visuals
• Must disable adblocker
• Only restores previous cards with premium

#6. Card Conjurer

Card Conjurer homepage

Cardconjurer.com started out very strong and then quickly nose-dived. One click from the homepage, and I was already in the card creator tool, no sign up or login required. And then I started using the tool.

Card Conjurer creator

Conjurer’s card creator is great if you like their specific knock-off card design. The only card frames included on their tool are some sci fi-ish frames that look like they were stolen from Magic’s alternate timeline game, Space: The Convergence. Despite this, I was able to make a passable Magic proxy. Access to layer editing makes their card creator a step above the others, but the lack of the classic MTG card frames and fonts makes this site a little lackluster.

Despite access to the layers, I was unable to move my uploaded card art beneath the frame layer and ended up with a fairly bad looking card.

Pros:

• No sign up required
• Layer editing
• Savable collection

Cons:

• No original Magic card frames
• Hard to position images against transparent background
• Can’t move card art under the frame layer

#5. MTG Cardsmith

Mtgcardsmith.com is an online card generator site that allows players to mock up custom cards. MTG Cardsmith’s best feature is its lack of text-code input. Having buttons that add symbols to the card automatically makes it easy to use and lets you skip memorizing which symbol means “mana” and which means “Phyrexian mana.”

MTG Cardsmith artwork upload

MTG Cardsmith is free to use, even if you don’t create an account, but you’ll need one to save your creations.

MTG Cardsmith Card Maker details

MTG Cardsmith card image example

Images downloaded from MTG Cardsmith were of a fine quality.

This site also offers an upgraded premium version, which allows you to upload custom set symbols. The site makes you disable your adblocker, though, which then blocks out the footer at the bottom of their site, so I couldn’t select to upgrade to premium if I wanted to.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• No sign-up needed to start
• Fair quality download

Cons:

• Need premium subscription to unlock all features
• Can’t use the site with an adblocker installed
• Minimum card art upload size is hard to work with

#4. MTG Print

If you’re looking for the no-frills, basic proxy printing site, mtgprint.net is the one for you. When you open this site, you’re greeted with an area to print your deck list and a few extra tabs for information.

MTG Print homepage

The beauty of this site is the simplicity in getting a PDF ready for printing. You can manually type in card names for the site to search (including many different art and set variations), or upload a deck from another popular deckbuilding site. Once you’re satisfied with your deck, you can download the PDF and print.

MTG Print card adjustments

The obvious downside is that the responsibility of how the card is printed is on the user. You need to make sure you have solid card stock and a great printer if you want high-quality MTG cards.

Pros:

• Ultra-easy site to navigate
• Many different sets and art variations
• Free to download and print

Cons:

• User required printing and supplies
• No products for purchase, only PDF downloads

#3. MTG.Design

Mtg.design is a simple card creator currently in an open beta. The site is very promising, and the card editor is located under a single “Create” page.

MTG.Design homepage

MTG.Design dashborad

MTG.Design’s create-a-card page is simple and has top-to-bottom forms to fill out via various text boxes and drop boxes to complete your card. They don't give you full access to custom templates; for example, your options for the type line are limited to actual type combinations we’ve seen in game, but you can enter custom text for the super- and sub-types.

My only real gripe with MTG.Design is the need to re-render the card whenever I make an adjustment, rather than it rendering my changes in real time. Its “save and share” feature also leaves a bit to be desired, since it just opens a permanent link to the card image. Despite having to create an account, there’s no way to save a collection of custom cards, besides downloading them all one at a time. Hopefully, we’ll see this site updated with new features in the near future.

Pros:

• Editable set/set numbers/set codes
• High quality download
• No ads!

Cons:

• No dark mode
• Not all features implemented yet
• Have to re-render every time you change something
• No saved collection of created cards

MTG.Design card designer

#2. Printingproxies

As with all proxy sites, Printingproxies.com is good for saving money compared to legal and sanctioned Magic cards. This site is good for getting the ultra-expensive cards or filling out a deck without breaking your bank account.

I appreciate that the main page shows you the pricing scale for buying cards. The bigger the order, the cheaper the individual price of the cards becomes. Once you’re ready, it’s quite easy to import a deck from popular sites or search for cards individually.

Printing Proxies Pricing Plan

Custom art is also fine as long as it meets the guidelines the site lays out. This is in the same section as the import feature and is well labeled.

Printing Proxies deck import

You can select the art and card back, but be aware that one of the biggest complaints about this site is the card quality. Many orders have been reviewed as having off-color or blurry text. Many people understand this is a proxy and don’t care so much, but you should like what you’re paying for. We've got our own review here.

Printing Proxies card back selector

The cards are created in China and take about a week to ship to a US address. From Reddit, I’ve seen that shipping to other countries like Canada takes much longer.

Pros:

• Easy to navigate site
• A wide range of other TCGs
• A progressive price scale

Cons:

• Some color and text quality issues
• Good but not great price
• Plenty of Reddit negative customer experiences

#1. MTG Nexus

Mtgnexus.com is your best bet for creating custom MTG proxies. Its “Card and Set Creator” tool works wonders for a free site, and it lets you arrange your custom creations into cycles and sets. MTG Nexus has the most options for card frames, including split and fuse cards, aftermath frames, sagas, battles, plus borderless versions. This makes MTGNexus not only the best for creating your own original Magic cards, but also the best for creating unique variants of your favorite official cards.

MTGNexus homepage

MTGNexus creator options

Pros:

• Layouts for every card frame you can think of
• Save cards as sets, cycles, or individually
• Great forum for discussing card creation topics
• Collection tracker tool

Cons:

• Requires sign up

How Do I Print My Own Proxy?

Now that you’ve found the best site to design your custom Magic proxies, how do you get them into your hands? Print them yourself, of course! You’ll need a printer with good color quality and legibility.

Once you have your custom cards designed and downloaded, you’ll want to print them onto high-quality paper. Make sure they’re printed at the correct size to match a standard Magic card. Then, cut out the cards and insert them into card sleeves alongside another, cheaper Magic card. Voilà! A custom proxy Magic card, ready to go in any sleeved deck.

How Do I Make My Proxies Nice?

The easiest way to up your proxy quality is to make sure you have a high-quality download of the card image. The smallest pixel imperfections are magnified a hundred times once the card is printed physically, so check and double check before you print.

You can also invest in a printer designed for trading cards. Some printers can handle printing directly onto blank trading cards, and many proxy-makers use this method to create proxies with a real “card feel” to them.

Are MTG Proxies Legal?

Yes, making proxies is legal, so long as you don't try to sell them. Proxy cards can't be played in DCI-sanctioned events. However, WotC won't stop you from purchasing or printing your own proxies and playing with them in casual games.

Wrap Up

Phantasmal Image | Illustration by Nils Hamm

Proxies have always been a hot topic in the Magic community. Many folks have wasted their energy hand-wringing over the ethical implications of printing your own cards for a game designed for ages 13 and up. Here’s my take: Print whatever cards you want. Play with whatever cards you want. Life’s too short for you to spend it pining for a Volcanic Island just to get a taste of what high-powered Magic is like.

What do you think? Will you be printing out any of your own proxies? Have you designed a custom set or Cube you’d like to get physically? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim’s Twitter/X. Thanks for reading!

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