How Much Does It Cost to Make a Card Game?

Beginner Guide · 8 min read · By Chitmunk Team · October 22, 2026

Your game works on index cards, and your friends keep asking to play it again. So what would a printed deck cost? Search for that and you get ranges too wide to plan with, so we priced one specific deck.

Every print price below comes from TheGameCrafter's published price list as of October 16, 2026. TheGameCrafter is a print-on-demand shop: it prints to order, and its prices start at a single copy. Prices change, so check their site before you order.

Art and shipping depend too much on you to quote, so for those we'll tell you what to ask.

Where the money goes

You don't spend it all at once. Most of the design work happens on paper, which costs next to nothing. Then comes one printed copy, and you only order more once people start asking for their own.

Every print price in this post is cards and box only. TheGameCrafter adds a handling fee, shipping and tax at checkout.

Paper first, then your own printer

Make your first prototype ugly on purpose. Index cards and a marker will tell you whether the game is fun, and that's all you need to know this early. (And every card you cut now is one you never pay to print.)

Once the rules settle down, move to your printer. Plain paper is fine. Slide each card into a sleeve with an old playing card behind it and it shuffles like a store-bought deck. The point is speed: change three cards on Tuesday, play the new version on Wednesday.

Paper and ink are the running cost, and they stay small if you only reprint the cards that changed. You buy sleeves once and reuse them. A paper trimmer is optional but much faster than a ruler and knife. Our guide to printing and cutting your prototype at home covers printer settings and getting the backs to line up.

Your first printed copy

Sooner or later you'll want a copy that feels finished, for a tester in another city or a photo that isn't index cards. Upload your card images to a print-on-demand shop and one boxed copy arrives on card stock.

TheGameCrafter charges by the sheet, not by the card. A sheet holds 18 poker-size cards, and you pay for every sheet your deck starts, full or not.

Pricing a 54-card game

Say your game has 54 poker-size cards (2.5 × 3.5 inches) and ships in a tuck box, the folding box a deck of playing cards comes in.

Fifty-four cards fill exactly three sheets. At $2.99 a sheet that's $8.97 for the cards. Add the $5.85 poker tuck box and one copy costs $14.82.

TheGameCrafter also lists a 54-card hook box at $3.28, which would bring the same copy to $12.25. Look at both boxes on their site before you pick one for playtest copies.

Why card 55 is the expensive one

Card 55 starts a new sheet, so it costs $2.99 on its own. Cards 56 to 72 then cost nothing extra. Here's one copy at each step, cards only:

If your deck lands on 55, cut one, or fill the other 17 slots with rules reference cards and a few spares. Poker tuck boxes come in 36, 54, 72, 90 and 108, which means a 55-card deck needs the 72-card box (same $5.85).

What card size does to the price

Smaller cards fit more to a sheet, and that changes the price a lot. We priced the same 54 cards in seven sizes TheGameCrafter prints (cards only):

Tarot size nearly doubles the card cost ($17.04 against $8.97). Mini saves $1.27 on a single copy.

Don't shrink everything to micro just yet. A card with a paragraph of rules needs the room, and anything players hold in a fan of eight has to fit in a hand. A card with one number and an icon is fine at mini. The card size reference lists the common sizes with their bleed, in inches and millimeters.

Small runs, from 10 copies to 1,000

Order more copies and each one gets cheaper. TheGameCrafter prices at 1, 10, 100, 500 and 1,000 copies, and for the same game and tuck box it works out like this:

A thousand copies cost about a third as much each. They also cost $5,220 up front, and that's a thousand boxes in your hallway.

Keep the first run small, and know where every copy is going before you order it. Ten is a good number for blind playtesting, where people learn the game from the box with you out of the room. Add a couple if a reviewer or a game night is already waiting on one.

Costs that aren't on the price list

Printing is the part with a published price. The rest takes some estimating.

Your first printed proof will probably show you something the screen didn't, often a typo or a color that prints darker than it looked. Plan on two proofs before you order copies for anyone else. The print-ready checklist flags text that sits too close to the edge, so run it before the first one.

Art is the number nobody can give you in advance. It depends on how many different illustrations you need, which can be far fewer than your card count. A 54-card game might need 54 pieces of art, or six (one per suit) plus a card back. Count yours before you ask an artist for a quote.

A separate rulebook is one more printed piece. TheGameCrafter's small booklet is $2.75 for a single copy, but check that it fits your box. Some designers put the rules on a few reference cards instead, which also fills those empty slots on the last sheet.

Software can cost nothing: a spreadsheet and any image editor will do. Chitmunk starts at $2.99 a month, so if you use it, count the months you'll be building.

Where you and your testers live decides shipping and tax. Look at the cart before you treat any per-copy price as final, and compare having everything sent to you, to hand out yourself, with a separate shipment to each tester.

From index cards to ten playtest copies

Here's one way it could go for the same 54-card game. Only the print costs are filled in, because the rest depends on you.

The printing comes to $142.84 for twelve copies: two proofs to mark up and ten for blind playtesters. Art, software and whatever the cart adds at checkout come on top.

If your cards are in Chitmunk, Print pricing on Game Home works out the print column from your own decks, at 1, 10, 100, 500 or 1,000 copies.

When a factory run makes sense

Factories print in large runs with a minimum order quantity (MOQ). Per copy they can come in under print-on-demand, but you pay for the whole run up front, pay freight, and store the boxes.

Before comparing per-copy prices, ask whether you already have buyers for the whole run. If backers are waiting on a crowdfunding campaign, get quotes from several manufacturers for your exact components, and read our Kickstarter prep guide first. If you don't have buyers yet, print-on-demand lets you sell or give away copies one order at a time while you find out whether anyone wants them.

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