Tutors are the single most powerful consistency tool in Magic. A tutor is any spell that searches your library for a specific card and puts it in your hand, on top of your deck, or straight onto the battlefield. In a 100-card singleton Commander deck — where you run exactly one copy of everything — a tutor is effectively a second (or fifth) copy of your best card. Want your board wipe when the table goes wide? Your combo piece? Your answer to the deck that’s about to kill you? A tutor finds it on demand. This guide ranks the best tutors in MTG by color and by what they fetch, with live 2026 prices verified on Scryfall, plus the honest nuances most lists skip: which “tutors” are actually traps, why red can’t really tutor, and how many you should run before the table starts glaring at you.

How many tutors should a Commander deck run?

There’s no ban on tutors and no hard cap, but the community rule of thumb is 3 to 6 tutors in a focused casual deck, scaling up to 8–12+ in a high-power or cEDH build that’s assembling a specific combo. The logic is simple: each tutor makes your deck more consistent but also more repetitive — if six of your slots all fetch the same two-card combo, every game starts to feel identical, and experienced pods will target you for it. A good starting point:

• Casual / precon-level: 2–4 tutors, mostly cheap flexible ones that grab whatever the situation needs.
• Focused / mid-power: 4–6 tutors, a mix of universal and type-specific (grab your engine, your removal, your mana rock).
• High-power / cEDH: 8–12+, because you’re tutoring for a win con and speed matters more than variety.

Match the tutor to the deck: a deck with one game-ending card wants tutors that grab anything; a deck built around creatures or artifacts wants the cheaper type-specific tutors below.

Best universal (unconditional) tutors

These grab any card in your library, no restrictions. Black owns this category so completely that “tutor” and “black” are nearly synonymous in Magic.

• Demonic Tutor — the gold standard. Two mana, any card, straight to hand, no downside. From ~$13 for a modern reprint (original printings run $75+).
• Vampiric Tutor — instant speed, one mana, but it puts the card on top of your library and costs 2 life, so you draw it next turn. The flexibility of casting it end-of-turn is worth the tempo hit. ~$38.
• Imperial Seal — a sorcery-speed Vampiric Tutor. Same effect, but you can only cast it on your turn. A luxury card at ~$165 — great, but not a budget include.
• Grim Tutor — three mana, 3 life, any card to hand. Strictly worse than Demonic Tutor but a perfectly good second copy. ~$24.
• Diabolic Tutor — four mana, any card to hand, zero downside. Overcosted for cEDH but the $2 price makes it the go-to budget universal tutor.
• Beseech the Mirror — a newer sorcery that can cast the tutored card for free if you “bargain” (sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token). Build-around power at ~$20.

Best tutors by color

Every color can tutor for something — but they’re wildly unequal at it. Here’s the honest color pie.

Black — the tutor color

Beyond the universal tutors above, black also has Diabolic Intent (~$14, sacrifice a creature to grab any card — cheaper and instant-worthy in a deck full of expendable tokens), Dark Petition ($2.84, refunds mana if you have Spell Mastery), Scheming Symmetry ($8.48, one mana but symmetric — every player tutors, so use it as a last-resort or with a way to deny the opponent their card), and Wishclaw Talisman ($1.87). One warning on Wishclaw: after you use it, it passes to an opponent, handing them a tutor next turn. Sacrifice it in response, use it as your final piece, or pair it with a way to blow it up.

Green — creatures and lands

Green can’t grab any card, but it puts creatures and lands directly onto the battlefield, which is often better than to-hand. Green Sun’s Zenith (~$28) and Worldly Tutor (~$25) find creatures; Chord of Calling ($6.33) does it at instant speed with convoke; Finale of Devastation ($50.88) is a game-ending X-tutor that can also pump your team. Natural Order (~$14) sacrifices a green creature to slam a bigger one into play. For repeatable value, Fauna Shaman ($3.05) and the Reserved-List luxury Survival of the Fittest (~$395) turn spare creatures into whatever you need each turn. Green also has the best land tutors — see below.

White — artifacts, enchantments, and equipment

Enlightened Tutor (~$33) is white’s marquee tutor — one mana, instant speed, finds any artifact or enchantment to the top of your library. Idyllic Tutor ($10.40) grabs enchantments to hand, Steelshaper’s Gift ($9.78) finds any equipment for one mana, and Eladamri’s Call ($11.08, a white-green instant) finds any creature to hand. White also has the best creature “recruiters” — the toolbox mages below.

Blue — spells and artifacts

Mystical Tutor (~$16) is the blue Vampiric Tutor for instants and sorceries only — top of library, one mana, instant speed. For artifacts, Fabricate ($9.42) and Whir of Invention ($5.44, to the battlefield with improvise) are premium, and Tezzeret the Seeker ($24.34) doubles as a planeswalker. Solve the Equation ($3.89) is a budget instant/sorcery tutor.

Red — the color that can’t tutor

Here’s the honest part most lists bury: red is genuinely bad at tutoring. Its one real tutor is Gamble (~$15) — one mana to find any card, but then you randomly discard a card from your hand, so it can whiff on the very card you just grabbed if it’s your only one. Red’s “card advantage” is impulse draw, not searching. If you’re in a red-heavy deck and want tutor-like consistency, lean on colorless and artifact tutors (below) instead — that’s the workaround every mono-red and Rakdos player uses.

Best tutors by what they fetch

Creature tutors

Beyond Green Sun’s Zenith and Worldly Tutor, the creature toolbox runs on cheap “recruiter” bodies that fetch a creature when they enter: Imperial Recruiter ($13.19, power 2 or less), Recruiter of the Guard ($5.21, toughness 2 or less), and the value demons Rune-Scarred Demon ($0.74 — a 6/6 flyer that tutors any card on entry, an absurd budget deal) and Razaketh, the Foulblooded ($14.41, repeatable sac-tutoring).

Artifact tutors

Artifact-heavy decks have the deepest, cheapest tutor package in the game. The “Mage” cycle fetches artifacts by mana value and leaves a body behind: Trinket Mage ($0.41, MV 1), Tribute Mage ($0.98, MV 2), and Trophy Mage ($0.67, MV 3) — three tutors for under $3 combined. Add Enlightened Tutor, Fabricate, Whir of Invention, Tezzeret the Seeker, and the enchantment-land Urza’s Saga ($40.63), which builds Constructs and tutors up a cheap artifact before it sacrifices itself.

Land tutors (and why fetchlands aren’t the same thing)

A quick distinction casual guides get wrong: land tutors search for any land, while fetchlands (Scalding Tarn, etc.) only find basics or specific dual types. The best true land tutors are Crop Rotation ($3.73, instant — sacrifice a land to grab any land, perfect for finding a combo land like Cabal Coffers), Expedition Map ($0.80, colorless so it fits any deck), and Sylvan Scrying ($0.33). Use these to find the utility lands in our best lands for Commander guide.

Best budget tutors (under $3)

You don’t need a $165 Imperial Seal to get consistency. The best cheap tutors: Diabolic Tutor ($2.10, any card), Dark Petition ($2.84), Wishclaw Talisman ($1.87), Rune-Scarred Demon ($0.74), Final Parting ($0.40, tutors one card to hand and one to graveyard — great in reanimator), Trinket / Trophy / Tribute Mage ($0.41–$0.98), Expedition Map ($0.80), Sylvan Scrying ($0.33), and Fauna Shaman ($3.05). That’s a full tutor suite for under $15 total. Prices this cheap make it easy to check current card prices and build a consistent deck on a budget.

Advanced: exile-based “tutors” (and their real risk)

Two cards top every cEDH tutor list but are not normal tutors, and beginners get burned by them: Demonic Consultation (~$8) and Tainted Pact (~$34). Instead of searching, they exile cards from your library until they find the one you named. In a singleton Commander deck that means you can exile your win condition — or deck yourself out entirely. They exist almost exclusively as combo pieces with Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac (exile your whole library, then win with an empty deck). Powerful, but a trap outside a dedicated build. Don’t run them as “just a good tutor.”

Common tutor mistakes

• Running too many. Six tutors that all grab the same combo makes every game identical and paints a target on you. Diversify what you’re searching for.
• Tutoring to hand when you could tutor to the battlefield. Green Sun’s Zenith cheating a creature into play is a tempo mile ahead of a to-hand tutor you still have to cast.
• Ignoring the symmetry on Wishclaw Talisman and Scheming Symmetry. Both hand value to opponents unless you plan around them.
• Treating exile-tutors as safe. Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact can lose you the game if you don’t have the follow-up.

Tutors vs. card draw: which do you want?

They solve different problems. A card draw engine gives you volume — more cards, more options, more gas over a long game. A tutor gives you precision — the one specific card you need, right now. Combo and toolbox decks lean on tutors; midrange and value decks lean on draw; most good decks run a mix of both. If you’re not sure which your deck wants, the fastest way to find out is to build it and test it: our AI deck builder generates a full, legal Commander decklist with the right tutor, ramp, and draw balance already dialed in, and the MTG Deck Analyzer tells you if your consistency count is off.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best tutor in MTG?

Demonic Tutor is the consensus best — two mana, any card, to hand, no downside. Vampiric Tutor edges it out in cEDH for the instant speed, but for 99% of Commander decks Demonic Tutor is the pick.

How many tutors should I run in Commander?

3–6 in a casual or focused deck, 8–12+ in high-power/cEDH. More tutors mean more consistency but less variety, so match the count to how much your deck depends on finding one specific card.

Can red decks tutor?

Barely. Red’s only true tutor is Gamble (with a random-discard downside). Red decks get consistency from colorless and artifact tutors like Expedition Map, Trinket Mage, and Fabricate instead.

What’s the cheapest good tutor?

Rune-Scarred Demon ($0.74) tutors any card and leaves a 6/6 flyer behind, and Diabolic Tutor ($2) grabs anything with no strings. For artifacts, Trinket/Trophy/Tribute Mage are all under a dollar.

Are any tutors banned in Commander?

No — every tutor in this guide is fully Commander-legal as of 2026. The format’s power comes largely from how good tutoring is, and the Rules Committee has left it alone.

Build a more consistent deck

Tutors are how good decks stop losing to variance. Pair them with the rest of your consistency package — solid deckbuilding fundamentals, enough staples and ramp, the right removal and board wipes — and let our AI Commander deck builder assemble the whole thing for you. Browse community decklists for inspiration, then sign up free to save and generate your own.

All card prices are approximate and reflect the cheapest current printing on Scryfall as of June 2026; premium and original printings often cost more. Card images © Wizards of the Coast, sourced via Scryfall with artist credit.