How to Export Your Card Collection from MTG Arena

Magic: The Gathering Arena doesn't make card collection management obvious — there's no "Export" button sitting in plain sight. But exporting your collection is genuinely useful, and once you understand how the process works and what tools are involved, it becomes a straightforward part of managing your digital card library.

Why Export Your MTG Arena Collection?

Players export their collections for several practical reasons:

• Deck building in third-party tools like Moxfield, Archidekt, or TappedOut, which offer more advanced filtering and brewing features than the Arena client itself
• Tracking wildcards and collection progress over time
• Identifying card gaps before a draft or ranked season
• Importing into spreadsheet tools to analyze your collection by set, rarity, or format legality

The Arena client itself is optimized for playing, not deep collection analysis. Third-party tools fill that gap — but they need your collection data to work with.

How MTG Arena Stores Collection Data

MTG Arena saves your collection data in a local log file on your device. This log, called Player.log, is continuously updated as you play and open packs. It contains a snapshot of your current card inventory, including quantities of each card you own.

On Windows, you'll typically find this log at:

%AppData%..LocalLowWizards Of The CoastMTGAPlayer.log 

On macOS, the path is inside the Library folder under Application Support. The exact path can vary slightly depending on your installation, but it lives within the MTGA application data directory.

This log file isn't a clean export — it's a raw data log. Reading it directly isn't practical for most players, which is where collection exporter tools come in.

Using a Collection Exporter Tool 🃏

The most widely used method involves a dedicated tool that reads your Player.log file and converts it into a usable format. MTG Arena Tool (also called MTGA Assistant in some versions) is one of the most established options. It runs as a companion app alongside Arena and continuously reads your log file to maintain an up-to-date collection database.

Here's how the general process works:

1. Install a companion tool that supports Arena log parsing
2. Launch MTG Arena and log into your account — the tool needs an active, recent session log to read from
3. Let the tool parse the log — most tools do this automatically once Arena has been opened and the collection has loaded
4. Export from the tool in your desired format — common formats include CSV, plain text deck lists, or direct sync with deck-building platforms

Some tools export your entire collection as a list of card names with quantities. Others output format-specific inventories, breaking your collection down by Standard, Historic, or Alchemy legality.

Direct Export for Deck Builders

If your goal is specifically to use a platform like Moxfield or Archidekt, many of these sites accept a direct paste format. MTG Arena itself supports copying individual deck lists to clipboard from within the deck builder — but this only exports cards already in a deck, not your full collection inventory.

For full collection export to a platform like Moxfield:

• The platform typically has a "Collection Import" feature
• You'll need to generate a collection export from a companion tool first
• The file format is usually a simple list: card name, quantity, and sometimes set code

Some platforms have their own Arena integration tools or browser extensions that streamline this further.

Variables That Affect How This Works for You

The export process isn't one-size-fits-all. Several factors shape how smoothly it goes:

What Can Break the Process

A few common issues players run into:

• Stale log data — if you haven't launched Arena recently, the log may not reflect your current collection
• Tool compatibility after Arena updates — Wizards pushes updates that sometimes change the log structure, temporarily breaking third-party parsers until they update
• macOS permission issues — on newer macOS versions, apps may need explicit permission to read files in certain directories
• Partial exports — some tools only export cards that have appeared in your collection since the tool was installed, not retroactively

Understanding the Scope of What Gets Exported 📋

Not every asset in your Arena account translates cleanly into an export:

• Card quantities export reliably across most tools
• Cosmetics (card styles, pet variants, sleeves) typically don't export in any meaningful way
• Wildcards — some tools track these separately rather than as part of the card inventory
• Duplicate counts are usually included, which matters for formats that allow four copies per deck

The completeness and accuracy of your export depends heavily on the tool you're using and how recently it was updated to match Arena's current log format.

How useful a collection export actually is comes down to what you're trying to do with it — whether that's optimizing a competitive deck, cataloging your collection across platforms, or figuring out which wildcards to spend next. The technical path to getting the data out is reasonably consistent, but what you do with that data once it's exported varies significantly based on your goals and which tools fit your workflow.