AI Pokémon card grader

How the AI card grader works

1. You add two photos, the front and the back. Each one is checked the moment it uploads: size, focus and exposure. A photo that’s too blurred or too small to read is turned away with the reason, before anything is analysed.
2. The card is identified from the front photo and matched to UltraBall’s catalogue, 1st Edition and Shadowless printings included. There’s nothing to pick. The report names the card it found, and you can change it if it’s wrong.
3. The card is measured. The analysis finds the card’s outline, measures the borders, and scores each corner, each edge and the surface of each face from 1 to 10.
4. Our own checks run on top: is the whole card in frame, was the camera square to it, is there glare on the card itself, and does any one reading look wrong next to the rest.
5. You get the report: the estimate and its range, what held the card back, and every score drawn on your photo. Tap a region and the photo zooms to it.

The whole thing takes about 15 to 40 seconds once both photos are in.

What it looks at

The same four things a grader does, on both sides of the card.

Centering

How evenly the print sits inside the cut, left to right and top to bottom. It’s the one part of grading you can measure with a ruler, and the one part PSA publishes as numbers. The report shows the split for each side and the guides it was measured from, so you can see they’re sitting on the border. If they aren’t, enter the borders yourself and the estimate is worked out again. To measure by hand, use the card centering tool.

Corners

Four corners, front and back, each with its own score. Corners are where a card shows handling first: a white dot on the tip, a soft or rounded point, or the layers starting to lift. On the back of a Pokémon card the dark blue border makes whitening easy to see, which is why a card that looks perfect from the front so often loses its 10 on the back.

Edges

Four edges a side. Whitening, small chips and rough factory cuts all show along the edge. The analysis scores what it sees; it doesn’t say whether a mark is wear or came off the cutting line that way. A rough cut is a factory flaw and a grader still counts it.

Surface

One score for each face. A flat photo shows scuffs, stains, ink spots and print defects. It misses most holo scratches, print lines and dents, which only appear when the card is tilted under a light. The report lists what couldn’t be judged so you know what to check in hand.

How the estimate is worked out

Most tools average four part-scores and call the result a grade. That isn’t how a card is graded: one bad corner holds a card back however clean the rest is. Ours works like this.

• Centering sets a ceiling. If the front is outside 55/45, the card can’t be a 10, whatever else is true. The limits are PSA’s own, from its published standards.
• The top of the range is the card’s overall condition, with the front counting for more than the back.
• The bottom of the range is its weakest area: corners, edges or surface, whichever scored lowest on either side. One region far below the rest pulls it down a further grade.
• A reading that looks wrong is left out, and you’re told. A finger, a card stand or the lip of a toploader can make an edge read as destroyed. You can put it back in if the damage is real.

The estimate is a whole grade from 1 to 10 with a range. No percentages are shown, because we’d be making them up: the method hasn’t yet been checked against enough cards with known PSA grades. When you get a card back from PSA, tell us the grade on its report. That’s how this gets measured.

PSA’s centering limits

PSA’s published figures, checked Sep 29, 2026. The first number is the most the wider border may take. PSA words these as approximate and lets a grader allow a little more on a card with strong eye appeal.

Source: PSA grading standards. The PSA grading scale explained covers what each grade means beyond centering.

How to photograph a card for grading

The photo decides how much the analysis can see. Two minutes here is worth more than anything else on this page.

1. Take the card out of its sleeve. Hold it by the edges. Lay it on a plain surface darker than the card’s border: a desk mat or a sheet of dark paper.
2. Light it from the side. A window or a lamp off to one side gives soft, even light. Turn the flash off. If you can see a white patch on the holo, move the card or the light until it’s gone.
3. Hold the phone flat above the card, parallel to the table. If the card looks like a wedge on screen, the near border will measure wider than it is.
4. Leave background on all four sides. The corners and edges are what’s being judged, so they all need to be in the photo with room to spare.
5. Use the main camera at full size. 2,000 pixels or more on the short side shows fine wear. A screenshot, or a photo that’s been through a chat app, has usually been shrunk.
6. Tap the card to focus, then hold still. Turn it over and do the same for the back.

JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC photos up to 25 MB are accepted. Location and device details are stripped from the copy we keep.

Is the card worth grading?

The grade only matters for what it does to the price. On most modern chase cards, the jump is between a 9 and a 10: a PSA 9 sells for about what a clean raw copy does, and the 10 sells for two to four times that.

Today’s example: Charizard ex 199/165 from 151 is $415 ungraded, $360 as a PSA 9 and $1,425 as a PSA 10.

So the question isn’t “will it grade well?” but “is it a 10?”. If the estimate tops out at 9, grading a modern card often loses money once the fee is paid. PSA’s Standard level was $59.99 a card in September 2026, before shipping. Once you’ve confirmed which card it is, the report shows what it sells for raw and at each grade in the estimated range, and what’s left after the fee.

• Grading calculator: the same sums for any card and any fee.
• Is it worth grading Pokémon cards? walks through the decision.
• How to get a Pokémon card graded, step by step.
• PSA 10 Pokémon cards: what a gem mint copy is worth and how rare it is.

Vintage is different. A Base Set holo in PSA 6 or 7 is still a wanted card, and a slab protects it and proves it’s real. There, grading is as much about preservation as about the number.

What it can’t do

• It can’t feel the card. Dents, light creases and warping are found with fingers and a raking light.
• It doesn’t authenticate. It won’t tell you a card is real, or that it hasn’t been trimmed, pressed or recoloured.
• It doesn’t name the fault. You get a score and the pixels it came from, not “scratch” or “whitening”. We’d rather show you the region than guess at a label.
• It doesn’t grade slabbed cards, cards in sleeves or toploaders, or more than one card in a photo.
• English Pokémon cards only.

How this compares with the phone apps is covered in AI Pokémon card grading apps.

What happens to your photos

• Stored privately. Your photos go straight from your browser to private storage. They have no public address of their own.
• Sent to one provider. The photos are sent to Ximilar to be measured. Ximilar deletes each request after seven days. We can’t delete it from their side sooner.
• Not used for training. We don’t train anything on your photos.
• Shown on this page, and shareable by link. Your report, with both photos, appears in the “Recently graded” list on this page, and has a link you can send to a buyer or a friend. Search engines are told not to index it. Turn the link off on the report and it leaves the list and the link stops working.
• Deleted when you say so. Delete a report and both photos are removed from our storage straight away. Reports made without an account are deleted after 30 days; reports saved to an account stay until you delete them.
• What’s left after deleting. A record that a report was made, with no photos, no card and no measurements in it, so our usage adds up and the daily limit holds.