Keys and costs
How keys and the free allowance work
What the free monthly allowance covers, what your own eBay and Claude keys add, and what each costs.
On this page
Card Cabinet uses two outside services. eBay supplies asking prices and card photos. Claude, Anthropic's AI model, can read the cards you scan. Both need an API key, and there are two ways to provide one.
Option 1: the free allowance
Every account with a confirmed email address can use Card Cabinet's own keys, up to a monthly allowance:
| Each month | Included |
|---|---|
| Card scans | 25 |
| Price checks you start yourself | 50 |
The allowance resets on the 1st. Your account page and Home show how much you've used.
Some things don't count against it:
- Nightly re-pricing. Card Cabinet re-checks your collection's prices overnight, a share of your cards each night.
- Wish list checks. Your wish list is checked for deals every few hours.
- Adding photos you upload yourself, and everything else that doesn't call eBay or Claude: organizing, sets, sharing, exports.
What does count: each card you scan (a binder page counts one scan per card on it), and each price check you start yourself from a card or from Update values.
Option 2: your own keys
You can add your own keys in Settings, either or both:
| eBay keys | Claude key | |
|---|---|---|
| What they do | Prices, photo search and photo sync | Reads cards when you scan them |
| Cost | Free from eBay | Pay Anthropic per use: about $2 to $4 per 1,000 scans |
| Limits | eBay allows 5,000 searches a day per keyset | Whatever spend limit you set |
| Setup | About 10 minutes: step-by-step guide | About 5 minutes: step-by-step guide |
Your own keys are always used first. Price checks stop counting against the allowance as soon as your eBay keys are in. Scans stop counting once both are your own, because a scan can use eBay and Claude.
With your own eBay keys, price checks have no monthly limit, photo sync can cover your whole collection, and the nightly run re-prices far more of your cards: up to 3,000 eBay searches a night, compared with a small share of the site's pool on the allowance.
Why bring your own keys?
- No monthly limits from Card Cabinet. You're only bound by eBay's daily limit and the spending cap you set with Anthropic.
- You see and control the cost. eBay keys are free. Claude usage shows up in your own Anthropic account, and Card Cabinet shows this month's AI calls and their approximate cost in Settings.
- You can switch them off. Remove your keys in Settings at any time, and delete them at eBay or Anthropic. Card Cabinet goes back to the allowance.
How your keys are stored
Keys are encrypted before they're saved on our server and are used only for your account's own requests. They're never shown back to you, to other users, or on any page. Settings only shows that a key is saved.
Deleting your account deletes your keys with everything else.
Card Cabinet tests each key when you save it: it asks eBay for a sign-in token, or sends Claude a one-word message, and only keeps a key that works.
See also: Privacy at a glance.
Updated 2026-10-05.