Introducing DeckCheck Pro
Starting today, DeckCheck analyses now have two intelligence options: Standard and Pro.
Standard is the same AI DeckCheck has already been using. It is not going away. It will remain the default, it will remain one credit, and it will remain the option most people use most of the time.
Pro is the new option. If you want it, you can now spend more credits to run your analysis on a frontier AI with much stronger reasoning. If you do not want it, nothing is being taken away from you. This is an addition, not a replacement.
I want to start there because this feature only makes sense if the foundation is clear: I am not splitting DeckCheck into a "real version" and a "lesser version." I am giving people a choice.
Why I Didn't Do This Before
To explain why this is happening now, I need to explain a little bit about how AI works at a high level.
DeckCheck is powered by large language models, usually shortened to LLMs. That is the underlying technology. In plain English, these are the AIs doing the reading, reasoning, and writing when you run a Deck Scan, PowerTune, DeckTrim, and so on. There's a lot more that goes into getting the AI to give you the respones you see on the site, but at a foundational level, it's all powered by an LLM.
And, there are a lot of these AIs out there now. A lot. They vary wildly in price, speed, and intelligence. If you want to see just how crowded that landscape has become, Artificial Analysis keeps a giant live index of them.
So if all of these AIs exist, why didn't I just use the strongest one from day one?
The first reason was cost. I picked DeckCheck's original pricing and credit tiers pretty quickly after the initial popularity spike, and since then I have been constantly trying to thread a needle: keep prices reasonable, keep the site healthy, and still use an AI that produces genuinely good results. I really, really, really do not want to raise prices unless I absolutely have to. That has meant choosing an AI with a strong cost-to-performance ratio instead of simply choosing the most advanced (and very expensive) option available.
But cost was not the only reason.
The second reason was user experience. Even just a year ago, the gap between the AI I could responsibly use on DeckCheck and the state-of-the-art AIs was large enough that it created a product problem for me. And just to define that term clearly, state of the art simply means the most advanced AI currently available at the frontier of the field.
My fear was this: somebody would show a friend DeckCheck, the friend would see an incredible analysis, get excited, sign up, and then realize the amazing version they had just seen was actually a separate premium intelligence mode they did not have. I did not want that confusion. I did not want that complexity. I did not want the product to feel like a bait-and-switch where the coolest thing was always hiding one layer behind a paywall.
That is why I held off.
But two things have changed since then that made me reconsider: First, the gap has shrunk to a much more manageable degree. The Standard AI on DeckCheck is still good. Really good, in fact. The difference between Standard and the frontier AIs is still real, but it is no longer so enormous that I think simply offering a choice creates a broken product experience.
Secondly, the world has changed. A lot of people now use apps like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, and those apps already have this exact kind of intelligence toggle built into the experience. People are increasingly used to the idea that you can choose a faster everyday AI or a more advanced reasoning AI depending on the task. The big players have done a lot of the work of teaching users that this is normal.
So the user-experience hurdle that used to worry me has come way down. And after hearing this topic come up again and again in the Discord, it became clear that a lot of you want the choice. You understand the tradeoff, and you are willing to spend more than one credit when you want the strongest AI available.
How It Works
Whenever you run an analysis that costs a credit, you can now choose your intelligence level in the confirmation panel.
- Standard: The existing DeckCheck AI. Strong results for most decks. Costs 1 credit.
- Pro: A frontier AI with deep reasoning. Costs 5 credits.
This applies to the main analysis tools across the site. If you want the current experience, pick Standard. If you want to spend more for a stronger AI and stronger reasoning, pick Pro.
That is the whole philosophy here: more choice, not more friction. The current system remains. The new option simply sits beside it.
What Pro Actually Gives You
What Pro Does Give You
Pro gives you access to a stronger frontier AI with deeper reasoning.
But the important thing to understand is that stronger reasoning is the means, not the end. What you are really paying for is a better chance that the AI will understand what your deck is actually trying to do and, because of that, give you a better response.
That matters most when you are working on a deck that the Standard AI may have a harder time understanding properly. If your deck is oddball, esoteric, built around a weird engine, or trying to exploit some obscure mechanic, Pro has a better shot at really digging into the task and producing stronger analysis or stronger recommendations.
A simple example: if you built a very straightforward Dinosaur aggro deck, the Standard AI will probably do a very good job with it. That kind of deck is easier to understand and easier to improve. It is not that hard for an AI to say, "Here are some stronger Dinosaurs, here are the obvious support pieces, and here are some strategic upgrades."
But if you built a deck around some strange, niche interaction, things get much murkier. It is not necessarily that the deck is more powerful or even more complex in some absolute sense. It is just that there may be far fewer obvious cards and far fewer obvious lines of reasoning available. In those cases, the stronger AI and deeper reasoning in Pro may help it give you better suggestions and better understand what you are actually trying to accomplish.
What Pro Doesn't Give You
What Pro does not give you is perfection.
It does not mean every response will be better. It does not mean it will never be wrong. It does not mean it will perfectly score your deck on the CRISPI scale every time. Hallucinations can still happen. Misreads can still happen. Bad judgments can still happen.
Even the strongest AIs still suffer from the same fundamental weaknesses as cheaper AIs. They just tend to suffer from them less often, and when they succeed, the quality ceiling is usually higher.
So the right way to think about Pro is this: it gives you access to a stronger AI with deeper reasoning, which can lead to better results, especially on decks that are harder to understand well, but it does not guarantee a better result every single time.
And the reason it costs more is simple: those frontier AIs are materially more expensive to run. Pro is my way of offering access to them without forcing every DeckCheck user to pay more for their subscriptions.
Addressing Free Accounts
This part is important to me, so I want to make it very clear: I do not want core features locked behind a paywall. Never have, never will. So along with this change, I am increasing all free accounts to 5 analysis credits per day. The reason is simple: I want free users to be able to actually experience the Pro AI without having to spend a dime.
That being said, I am not going to do that at the expense of bankrupting the site, because that would ruin the fun for everyone. So for the rest of April 2026, this is going to be a real-world trial. I want actual usage data, not just my gut, so I can see whether this is sustainable at scale. If it proves feasible, I will keep free accounts at 5 credits per day. If it does not, I will reduce them back down to 3 credits per day.
My gut tells me this will work out. But I need the data to prove it.
Use What Fits
That's all folks!
If you want the strongest AI DeckCheck can offer and you are willing to spend more credits to get it, Pro is now there for you. I think this is the right balance. Standard remains affordable, familiar, and strong. Pro exists for the moments where you want to push for the best response DeckCheck can reasonably deliver today. As always, I will keep listening closely to feedback and tuning this over time. Thanks for helping shape the direction of the site.
Happy brewing,
Anthony
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