Most of the time you don’t get to choose the platform. Someone in the pod makes the game and posts a link, and that’s the platform you’re on. The two tools do behave differently once you’re in, however, and SpellBot, a Discord bot for filling pods, now creates games on only one of them. If you run games for a group, the choice is yours. Everything below comes from each platform’s own pages as they read in September 2026, so where a platform doesn’t say something, we don’t either.
At a glance
| SpellTable | Convoke | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Wizards of the Coast | Convoke, an independent service based in Montreal |
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Sign-in | Wizards Account | A Convoke account |
| Players per game | Up to 4 | Up to 8 |
| Card recognition | Click a card to identify it | AI card recognition |
| Life tracking | Life, commander damage and infect | Life and damage |
| Turn clock | Yes | Yes |
A cEDH pod is four players, so the gap in player cap is mostly about who else can sit in, like a spectator, a judge or someone streaming the game.
SpellTable
SpellTable is Wizards of the Coast’s own tool. You sign in with a Wizards Account, create a game and share its invite link with the rest of the pod. Its FAQ recommends a webcam that can stream at 1280×720 and a recent version of Chrome, and the troubleshooting page adds mobile Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. You can use a phone as your camera, however SpellTable calls that feature “currently experimental”. The camera and audio guide takes you through the setup itself.
Reading a card is a click, as clicking it in a player’s feed opens it in a drawer at the side of the screen. The catch is that it needs a clean look at the card. The FAQ lists what stops it working: glare, glossy sleeves, a blurry or badly angled camera, and a card half covered by another. A camera zoomed too far in or out is on the list too.
The FAQ also says a click captures a 300×300 section of a 720p stream, which is why a camera set too high turns every card into a guess. Basic lands aren’t scanned at all, and the FAQ says proxies, custom tokens and altered cards aren’t in its database. If your deck has playtest cards in it, read Proxies and playtest cards on camera before your first game.
Life totals, commander damage and infect counters sit on screen for every player, alongside a turn indicator and turn clock. There’s built-in audio too, however the FAQ describes it as “still in an early state” and recommends Discord for voice.
Moderation and privacy
SpellTable comes under Wizards’ Code of Conduct, which has a link for reporting a player whose behaviour makes the game unsafe or unwelcoming. On 16 March 2026 Wizards announced a pilot of voice moderation in SpellTable, using a tool from ggwp.com. In Wizards’ words, it uses “voice recording and artificial intelligence” to flag speech that may be harmful, with human moderators making the final decision.
The announcement is about SpellTable’s own voice and video, and it doesn’t mention Discord at all. For how long recordings are kept, it points you to Wizards’ privacy policy, and it gives no start or end date for the pilot. If this matters to you, read the announcement yourself.
As for video, SpellTable’s FAQ says streams are peer to peer, except in the rare case that they need to be routed through a server.
Convoke
Convoke is an independent browser tool, free to play, and it sums itself up as “Play MTG with your Webcam”. You join through a friend’s invite, your friends list or a public lobby, which makes a stranger’s game easier to find without going through Discord first. Its own comparison page lists games of up to eight players, 1080p video, life and damage tracking, a turn timer and a spectator mode. You can also reveal your hand to chosen players.
You can import a decklist from Moxfield and see your hand in the game, and it supports digital cards too. Convoke also says it works on mobile.
Convoke calls its card recognition “High-Accuracy AI Card Recognition” and says detection holds up “even with low-resolution webcams”. Its getting-started page has a lighting tip as well: keep lamps off the cards themselves and use a small light from the side.
Where Convoke really differs is the social side. You can commend players, block them or kick someone from your game. A community can also set up a guild, which gets a shared ban list, its own games and spaces, and extra features that come with boosts. In September 2026 the guild page listed nine guilds.
Convoke’s privacy policy (effective 23 April 2026) lists what it collects. That’s account details such as your email and display name, and usage and device data including your IP address. It also covers what you post, such as chat messages, room names, decklists and avatar images. Frames used for card recognition are processed “transiently”, with retention kept to a minimum. There’s nothing about voice in the policy, and none of the Convoke pages we read describes voice moderation.
A camera in a Discord call
Some pods skip both tools and turn their cameras on in a Discord voice channel. Press Video in the voice panel and your camera joins the call. It’s the simplest setup, but it’s also the one that gives you the least help. A Discord call carries video and voice only, so the table reads cards out and keeps life totals by hand or on a separate counter. It works best for friends who already trust each other’s tracking, and it’s where a pod falls back to when a platform is having a bad night.
Discord bots and TopDeck
Many servers fill pods with a bot, and when yours does, the bot decides which platform the game link opens.
SpellBot is a free /lfg bot, supported by PlayEDH. It gathers the players and opens a table on Convoke, Playgroup Live, EDHLAB, Girudo or Table Stream. SpellTable is missing from that list for a reason: SpellBot’s changelog records that it removed SpellTable support on 12 February 2026. Two days later it added a SpellTable option where the players create the game themselves. So if your server’s bot hands you a table without a link, someone in the pod has to make the SpellTable game and post it.
TopDeck.gg, the tournament platform, runs its own Discord bot, which posts game links for each round and for LFG matches. It’s supported Convoke alongside SpellTable since 4 April 2026, and organisers choose SpellTable, Convoke or no platform with the /set_round_settings command.
Which suits which
For your first game, use whatever your server uses. A few messages in its LFG channel will tell you which, and if you haven’t picked a server yet, the directory lists communities you can look at first.
Events are stricter. Each of the online series whose rules we summarise in Proxies and playtest cards on camera names one platform. A camera that passes on one hasn’t been tested on the other. Read the event page before round one and set up on the platform it names.
SpellTable suits a pod that wants a tool run by Wizards, and its four-player cap matches the format. Convoke suits a group that wants SpellBot to create its games, keeps a shared ban list for its members, or needs room for a spectator, a judge or a streamer. And if the moderation pilot puts you off SpellTable’s own audio, you don’t have to use it. Talk on Discord and leave SpellTable’s microphone off.
Not webcam platforms
You’ll see two other names turn up in the same searches. Playgroup Live is a free browser table for two to six players, with its own voice chat, and it uses “digital card images, not your physical collection”. EDHLAB is a free site for playing Commander online, and says “no webcam required”. Neither one plays your paper cards over a webcam, so they’re not in the comparison above.
Where to go next
When either platform can read your cards, you’re ready for a game, and Your first online pod takes you through it. If they can’t yet, the camera and audio guide will get you there.