Are ban lists as current as YGOPRODeck's?

We publish Forbidden & Limited changes for TCG, OCG, Master Duel and Speed Duel within an hour of Konami's announcement, and each change fires a card.legality.changed webhook.

Does the passcode really stay the same?

Yes. The passcode is Konami's own identifier, printed on the card, and it is stable across reprints and regions. Both APIs use it, which makes this the easiest migration of the five on this site — most integrations can switch the base URL and the field paths without touching their database at all.

Do you cover Rush Duel and Speed Duel?

Both, as separate pools rather than mixed into the main catalogue. They are different games with different rules and mostly separate card lists, and merging them is the most common cause of wrong results in Yu-Gi-Oh! tooling.

Is YGOPRODeck's data quality worse?

No, and we are not going to claim it is. YGOPRODeck is a good free resource that a large part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! community depends on. The differences are structural — per-printing prices, regional legality, an SLA — not a question of who has the cards right.

YGOPRODeck · Yu-Gi-Oh! only

YGOPRODeck API alternative — Yu-Gi-Oh! data compared

YGOPRODeck is the reference Yu-Gi-Oh! card API and it is free. TCGGraph matches its Yu-Gi-Oh! coverage and adds seven more games, GraphQL and legality webhooks behind one key.

Try TCGGraph free See pricing

What YGOPRODeck API does well

Free and comprehensive, with the full Yu-Gi-Oh! card pool including OCG-only cards.
Ban list data across TCG, OCG and Master Duel, kept current.
Rich archetype metadata that is genuinely hard to reproduce.
A large, active community and a deck builder people actually use.

Where TCGGraph differs

Coverage stops at Yu-Gi-Oh!. TCGGraph keeps the same modelling and adds seven more games.
Legality changes emit signed webhooks instead of requiring you to diff a poll.
Prices are normalised across five marketplaces with daily history.
GraphQL lets a deck view fetch cards across several games in one round trip.

Side by side

Feature comparison

Feature	YGOPRODeck API	TCGGraph
Games covered	Yu-Gi-Oh! only	8 games
TCG, OCG and Master Duel ban lists
Archetype metadata
Legality-change webhooks
Price history	Current prices	Daily, to 2019
European prices (Cardmarket)	One EUR figure	Trend, averages, depth
GraphQL
Price	Free	From $19/mo

When to use YGOPRODeck API instead

For a Yu-Gi-Oh!-only deck builder or ban list tracker, YGOPRODeck is free, complete and well maintained — use it. It is one of our upstream sources. TCGGraph makes sense once you need a second game or want webhooks instead of polling.

Migration

What the change looks like

Concepts map closely. Most migrations are a single afternoon of find-and-replace plus a test pass.

YGOPRODeck API

# YGOPRODeck
curl "https://db.ygoprodeck.com/api/v7/cardinfo.php?attribute=light&atk=gte3000"

TCGGraph

# TCGGraph
curl "https://api.tcggraph.com/v1/cards?game=yugioh&attribute=LIGHT&minAtk=3000" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TCGGRAPH_KEY"

Signals

When it is worth switching

None of these are reasons on their own. Two or three together usually are.

You need OCG and TCG legality kept apart, with the right banlist per region rather than one merged list.
You want price history for Yu-Gi-Oh! singles, which reprint constantly and move a great deal in price.
You are adding another game and would rather not maintain a second, differently-shaped integration.
You need an uptime commitment for something customer-facing.

Migration

Moving off YGOPRODeck API, step by step

The honest version, including the parts that are not one-to-one.

Step 1
Keep keying on the passcode
YGOPRODeck's id is the Konami passcode, and so is ours. That is the single biggest thing in your favour here: every deck list, collection row and price record you already store stays valid, because the identifier does not change.
Step 2
Split the merged legality
Where you currently read one banlist field, we return legality per region. Pass region=tcg or region=ocg and you get the right answer for your audience rather than a merged approximation that is wrong for both.
Step 3
Move monster stats under the namespace
atk, def, level, attribute and race move under gameData in REST and under the typed yugioh field in GraphQL. Link rating and pendulum scale become explicit fields rather than something you infer from the type string.
Step 4
Separate the card sets from the card
Instead of an array of set appearances hanging off the card, each printing is its own record linked to the card. That is what makes per-printing pricing possible, which for a game with forty reprints of a staple is the difference between a useful price and a meaningless average.

Field mapping

What each field becomes

The part that takes the longest is discovering that YGOPRODeck API spells the same concept differently. Here it is, written down.

YGOPRODeck API	TCGGraph	Notes
id	gameData.passcode	The same eight-digit Konami passcode.
atk / def	gameData.atk / gameData.def	Integers. def is null on Link monsters.
level	gameData.level	Holds rank for Xyz monsters; check monsterType.
race	gameData.monsterType	Renamed — race meant monster type, which confused people.
linkval	gameData.linkRating	Arrows are a separate array of compass directions.
banlist_info	legalities.tcg / legalities.ocg	Kept separate by region rather than merged.
card_sets[]	printings[]	Each printing is its own record with its own price.
card_prices	prices[]	Daily series per source, not a single snapshot.

FAQ

Common questions

Anything else, email hello@tcggraph.com. We will tell you if the answer is that you should stay where you are.

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