gradeornot
Rates as of October 23, 2026, checked every week

Every figure on this site is an estimate built from published rates. It is not a grade.

How it works

Is your card worth grading? Here is how the app decides.

In short: it compares what you would get for the card as it is with what you would get after grading, once every cost is paid. Four steps, about a minute.

To check a card
Free
Steps, about a minute
4
Possible answers
3
Costs counted, not just the fee
All

The four steps

  1. Pick your cardType its name or take a picture of it. The app finds what that card sells for right now, ungraded.
  2. Say how it looksTap Like new, Great, Good or Worn. Want to be more exact? Take a photo and the app measures how centered the picture is.
  3. The app does the mathIt works out what the card could sell for at each grade, how likely each grade is, and takes off every cost: the grading fee, postage both ways, supplies and selling fees.
  4. You get a plain answerSend it, Risky, or Keep it raw. With the numbers shown, so you can see why.

What is grading, anyway?

You mail your card to a grading company, such as PSA. An expert checks it and gives it a score from 1 to 10, then seals it in a hard plastic case with the score on the label. That sealed card is called a slab.

A high score can make a card worth far more. A low score can make it worth less than you paid to grade it. That gamble is the whole question this app answers.

A quick example

Made up numbers, just to show the idea

Say your card sells for $60 as it is. Graded a 10 it might sell for $400, graded an 8 only about $80. Grading one card on its own, with postage both ways, insurance and selling fees, costs about $100.

  • If it is likely a 10: you spend $100 to turn a $60 card into a $400 one. Send it.
  • If it is likely an 8: you spend $100 to turn a $60 card into an $80 one, and lose $80. Keep it raw.

Sending several cards in one box shares the postage, which is why the box planner can find a send worth making when no single card is.

Your real card is rarely that clear, so the app weighs every grade it could get by how likely each one is, and does the sum for you.

The three answers

  • Send itGrading should leave you with more money than selling the card as it is, after every cost.
  • RiskyIt could go either way. It pays if the card grades high and loses money if it does not.
  • Keep it rawGrading would most likely cost more than it adds. Sell it or keep it as it is.

Kept up to date

Grading companies change their prices with little warning, so every company's own price page is checked every week, and each price in the app has to match it. The date on the rates only moves when they all do. Rates as of October 23, 2026.

Sold prices are looked up fresh every day, and a saved sale is never used past that.

Good to know

  • It is a smart estimate, not a real grade. Only the grading company can grade your card.
  • It goes by what you tell it. Be honest about scuffs and soft corners and the answer will be too.
  • It cannot spot a fake.
  • Prices change. An answer is right for today's prices, so check again before you mail a box.
Try it on a card

See it in action

Start to finish

What actually happens to a card

You get a card, check it closely, mail it to a grader, and it comes back sealed with a score. The app helps with the big question in the middle: is it worth mailing in?

  • 01

    It changes hands

    Somebody offers a trade across a table, and the piles are not obviously even.

  • 02

    You look at it properly

    Centering measured, condition answered honestly, the grade taken as a spread.

  • 03

    It goes away in an envelope

    GRADEORNOTgradeornot.appTrading Card · Special Edition10CERT 00000001gradeornotappTRADING CARDSPECIAL EDITION

    One tier, one batch, postage split across everything that travels with it.

  • 04

    It comes back worth the trip

    GRADEORNOTgradeornot.appTrading Card · Special Edition10CERT 00000001gradeornotappTRADING CARDSPECIAL EDITIONOver selling it raw+$62.65or −$8.54, and you keep the card

    Or it does not, and the whole point was knowing which before you posted it.

The card shown is this site's own. Nothing here is a real set, a real player or a real grading company's label, because a picture used to sell a product is a different thing from a thumbnail used to identify the card you are pricing.

The reason this exists

5of 48 cards in an ordinary shoebox pay for their own grading.

We made 48 ordinary cards at random and ran each one through the app, as if you sent them 20 at a time. Only the lit ones would make you more money graded than sold as they are. Most cards are not worth grading, and that is exactly what the app is here to tell you.

Send itRiskyKeep it raw

A worked example

One card, with the sums shown

One example card, run through the app line by line: what it sells for now, what grading costs, the grade it needs, and how much extra you would make.

Vintage star, sharp

card1962 post war base

sells for$260.00 ungraded

centering56/44, measured

conditioncorners sharp · edges sharp · surface sharp

servicePSA Priority · 20 cards sent together

checking every grade it could get

cost to grade$137.35

needsa PSA 8 or better to make money

odds100% chance it pays off

profit+$707.22 vs selling it as is

Send it

Before you scroll on

Six cards. Would you send them?

Six made up cards. For each one, guess Send it or Keep it raw, then see what the app says and why. The app works every answer out for real, the same way it does for your card.

Grade or not

Card 1 of 60 right

Rookie refractor

Chrome era rookie · 1998

Sells for now
$240.00
Centering
52/48
Corners
Flawless
Edges
Flawless
Surface
Sharp
Service
Priority

Would you send it in to be graded?

If the app says Risky, it counts as Keep it raw here. Only send a card in when the numbers clearly say it will make you money.

The details, for anyone who wants the math

Centering: measured from your photo

Centering means how evenly the picture sits inside the card's borders. It is the one thing a phone can measure for real, so the app does. Take a photo and it finds the edges of the card and the edges of the picture, and compares the borders on each side.

A perfectly centered card is 50/50. To have a shot at a 10, the worse side can be no more than about 55/45. If the app cannot find the edges clearly, it tells you so instead of guessing.

You can skip the photo and just pick how the card looks. Answers from memory are taken down a notch (0.5 of a grade), because most of us think our own cards look better than a grader will.

How centered a card has to be for each grade

50/50 means the picture sits dead center. The further off it is, the lower the best grade it can get. Measured on the side that is most off.

  1. 50/50Perfect
  2. 55/45Up to a 10
  3. 60/40Up to a 9
  4. 65/35Up to a 8
  5. 70/30Up to a 7
  6. 75/25Up to a 6
  7. 80/20Up to a 5
  8. WorseUp to a 4

Grading is a gamble, so the app looks at every grade

Two graders can look at the same card and give it different scores. So the app does not bet on one grade. It works out the chance of each grade from 1 to 10, then adds up what you would make at each one, weighted by how likely it is.

Your card's worst feature sets the limit. Perfect corners and edges do not make up for a scratched surface: graders score it as a scratched card. The app allows at most one point of leeway, and only when everything else is clearly much better.

Some damage puts a hard limit on the grade. A crease, for example, keeps a card low no matter how well centered it is.

It counts every cost, not just the grading fee

The price on a grading company's website is not the whole cost. You also pay to mail the cards in and to get them back (insured, so the more they are worth, the more it costs), plus sleeves and holders to protect them.

Postage is paid per box, not per card. That is why grading one card on its own costs the most per card, and why sending several together can turn a no into a yes. The app shows you how much the number of cards in your box changes the answer.

When you sell the graded card, the selling site takes a fee and you pay to ship it. The app takes that off too, so the number you see is what you would actually keep.

Every price says where it came from

The price of your card at each grade comes from one of three places, and the app always tells you which: a sold price you typed in yourself, real recent sales from our price data provider, or the app's own estimate based on how old the card is.

That estimate is the least certain part, and it is labelled everywhere it is used. When every price is an estimate, the app is extra careful: it only says Send it when the profit is big enough that even a wrong estimate would not lose you money.

If you know what your card really sold for at one grade, type it in. One real price at the grade that decides the answer helps more than anything else, and the app tells you which grade that is.

gradeornot.app cut from stacked layers of card

Trade check: is the trade fair?

The trade check prices both sides the same way and shows you the difference. A trade counts as even when the two sides are within 5% or $5 of each other, whichever is bigger. A dollar either way does not matter on a $20 trade, but 5% of a $6,000 trade is $300, which does.

Sometimes it will not pick a side, on purpose. Some prices are real sales and some are the app's estimates. If the estimated part is bigger than the gap between the two sides, that gap might just be the estimate being off, so the app says it cannot call it rather than guess a winner. It checks this before calling anything even, because two piles of guesses can look perfectly even.

A graded card is priced at its grade, from real sales when there are some and from the estimate when there are not. Each card says which.

What it cannot do

It is not a grade. No grading company has seen your card, and nothing here decides what one would give it. It is an estimate built from what you told it.

It cannot see your card. Corners, edges and surface come from your answers. Print lines, dents and white edges are things you have to spot and tell it about, and if you describe a card too kindly, the answer will be too kind as well.

It cannot spot a fake. Nothing here checks whether a card is real.

Prices change. Grading prices change, card prices change faster, and an answer is right for today, not forever.

If grading would make you less than $25 extra, the app says it is not worth it, even though it is technically a profit. Your card is gone for weeks or months, and that is worth something too.