If you play Commander, you have had this conversation. Four people sit down, someone asks "so what are we playing?", and everyone gives a number between 6 and 8 that means something completely different to each of them. Ten minutes later one deck is comboing off on turn four and another is still trying to cast a five-mana sorcery.
EDHcheck exists to make that conversation take thirty seconds and actually mean something. Paste a decklist, get a bracket, get a power level, and get a list of the specific cards that put you there.
It is free, it needs no account, and it runs on every unique Magic card in existence.
What is a Commander bracket in MTG?
Brackets are Wizards of the Coast's official system for describing how a Commander deck plays before the game starts. They came out of the Commander Brackets Beta, and they are deliberately not a power ranking. They are a matchmaking language.
That distinction matters. Two decks can be built to the same standard of card quality and still produce completely different games. Brackets describe intent: how fast the deck wants to win, how much it interacts, and what kind of game the pilot is signing up for.
There are five of them:
- Bracket 1: Exhibition. Ultra-casual and theme-first. No Game Changers, no intentional two-card infinites, no mass land denial, no chained extra turns. Games go long on purpose.
- Bracket 2: Core. Roughly modern precon power. Splashy turns, social pace, same restrictions as Bracket 1.
- Bracket 3: Upgraded. Tuned past precon level. Up to three Game Changers, and late-game combos only, not early two-card infinites.
- Bracket 4: Optimized. High power. Efficient tutors, explosive starts, compact wins. No deckbuilding restrictions beyond the banned list.
- Bracket 5: cEDH. Competitive. Same lack of restrictions as Bracket 4. The difference is that the deck is built to beat the strongest known lists rather than to suit a table.
How do I check what bracket my Commander deck is?
Paste a decklist. A Moxfield or Archidekt link works, or plain text like 1 Sol Ring. The analyzer reads every card, looks its data up on Scryfall, and checks it against the criteria Wizards actually published.
It checks the four things Wizards' rules are built on:
Game Changers. The 53 cards officially designated as warping Commander games, last revised on 9 February 2026. Brackets 1 and 2 allow none at all, Bracket 3 allows three, and your commander counts toward that total if it is on the list.
Infinite combos. Scanned against the Commander Spellbook database, including whether a combo comes together early or only in the late game.
Extra turns and mass land denial. The other two limits Wizards sets. Bracket 3 allows a few extra turns but no mass land denial.
Fast mana and tutors are counted too, and they feed the power level, but they don't move a deck above Bracket 2 on their own because they aren't part of Wizards' rules. Wizards removed tutors from the bracket rules in October 2025.
You get a bracket from 1 to 5, and more usefully, the specific cards that placed you there. That last part is the whole point. "You are Bracket 4" is not actionable on its own. "You are Bracket 4 because of these two cards" tells you exactly what to cut if you want to sit at a Bracket 3 table.
What is the difference between deck power level and bracket?
This trips people up constantly, so it is worth separating clearly.
Bracket, 1 to 5, is the official Wizards tier. It is decided by deckbuilding criteria, and it is a category.
Power level, 1 to 10, is a continuous score describing how fast, consistent and resilient the deck is. It is calculated from measurable signals: average mana value, ramp density, card draw, removal and interaction, tutor count, combo access, Game Changers and card saltiness.
A Bracket 3 deck can span a wide range of power scores. A tightly built Bracket 3 list and a loosely built one land in the same bracket while playing very differently, and the power score is what tells them apart. Reading both together gives a far clearer picture than either alone. The full method is documented on How We Score, with the actual signals and weights rather than hand-waving.
What is the difference between Bracket 3 and Bracket 4?
This is the most common question I get, and it usually comes down to one thing: an early two-card infinite combo.
Bracket 3 permits combos that only assemble late in the game. It does not permit early two-card infinites. That single criterion is the clearest signal that a deck belongs in Bracket 4, more so than raw card quality or budget. A deck full of expensive staples can still be Bracket 3. A deck with Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation is not, no matter what the rest of the list looks like.
The other boundary is Game Changers. Three is the ceiling for Bracket 3, and going to four moves you up whether or not anything else changes. The heavy hitters people run into most are Rhystic Study, Cyclonic Rift and Demonic Tutor, and any one of them on its own takes a deck out of Core.
What other MTG Commander tools does EDHcheck have?
The bracket checker is the front door, but the site has grown into a full set of Commander tools, all free:
- Mana Base Analysis. Cast-rate probabilities by turn, a tipping-point turn, a full land-type breakdown, and budget-aware upgrade suggestions. Built on real hypergeometric math rather than rules of thumb.
- Combo Finder. Browse thousands of Commander combos filtered by colour identity and by what they produce.
- Game Changers. The full official list, with a page per card explaining why it is on there.
- Land Database. Every land archetype, including fetch, shock, dual, check and filter lands plus 20 more, filterable by colour, speed, format and budget.
- Deck Tester. Draw opening hands, then goldfish them on a free-form playmat with drag and drop, tokens and counters.
- Pod Checker. Run every deck at the table through at once and see how they line up against each other.
- Precon Decks. Every official Commander precon from 2009 onward, pre-analyzed and browsable by set.
- Deck Compare. Put two lists side by side and see exactly where the power difference comes from.
- Random Commander. Roll a legend and build around it when you want a deckbuilding prompt rather than a plan.
- Popular Commanders. What the format is actually playing, with power estimates per archetype.
- Price Checker, Mulligan Calculator, Pack Simulator, and a card guessing game that will name any Magic card you think of in under twenty questions.
The full set lives on the tools page. If you would rather look at other people's lists than build your own, Explore has community decks with their analysis already attached.
Is EDHcheck free?
Yes. Bracket analysis, power scoring, infinite combo detection, card rulings, the deck builder and the combo finder are all free, permanently, with no account required.
Free for you, at least. The hosting, the Firebase bill, the domain and the card data pipeline all show up every month whether anyone visits or not, and right now they show up addressed to me. I have made peace with this.
EDHcheck Pro is what keeps that sustainable. It adds AI-written deck primers, in-depth analysis with upgrade paths, deck comparison, pod balance checking, and an ad-free interface. Those AI features cost real money every time someone runs one, which is the honest reason they sit behind a subscription rather than a paywall drawn for its own sake. Everything that does not bill me per use stays free, and I intend to keep it that way.
How accurate is a Commander deck analyzer?
It is a fast, consistent estimate grounded in card-level data and official Wizards guidance. It is not a replacement for Rule Zero, and it is not a verdict on your deck.
Card data comes from Scryfall and updates within hours of a new set release. The Game Changers list is updated by hand to match each official revision. Combo data comes from Commander Spellbook. Where the analysis cannot fully verify something, such as a combo that needs a piece we can only describe by its effect rather than name it outright, it says so rather than quietly counting it toward your bracket.
Label your deck honestly, bracket up when the list calls for it, and use the analysis as shared language rather than an argument-ender. That is what it is for.
How do I analyze my Commander deck?
Paste a decklist on the homepage and you will have a bracket, a power score and a full card breakdown in a few seconds. No sign-up, no download, and no limit on how many decks you run.
More questions are answered on the FAQ. If something looks wrong, tell me. The feedback widget sits in the corner of every page, and there is a Discord too. Several of the most useful fixes on this site came from someone noticing their deck was scored wrong and saying so.