Budget tutors for Commander

Last updated: October 22, 2026

A tutor searches your library for a card and puts it in your hand (or onto the battlefield, or into your graveyard). In a 99-card singleton deck, finding your best card on demand is very strong, which is why the best tutors are expensive and several are on the Game Changers list. The cheap ones cost more mana or find a narrower range of cards, and for most decks that is a fair trade. Here they are by colour; every tutor we stock is on one list.

How many to play

A few, chosen for what your deck needs to find: usually your commander's best support card, a board wipe, or your win condition. A deck that tutors every turn plays the same game every time, which tables tend to enjoy less. Talk with your playgroup about what level suits them; the brackets guide covers the common expectations.

Black: find any card

Diabolic Tutor: four mana, any card. The plain version.
Dark Petition: five mana for any card, but adds three black mana back if you have two instants or sorceries in your graveyard.
Razaketh's Rite: five mana for any card, or cycle it for one when you don't need it.
Increasing Ambition: five mana for any card, with flashback to find two more later.
Final Parting: finds two cards: one to your hand, one to your graveyard. Strong in reanimator decks.
Wishclaw Talisman: two mana, then one more each use to find any card, but an opponent gets it afterwards.
Buried Alive: puts three creatures into your graveyard, ready for reanimation.

Blue: instants, sorceries and artifacts

Solve the Equation: finds any instant or sorcery.
Mystical Teachings: finds an instant or a card with flash, with flashback in black.
Spellseeker: a creature that finds an instant or sorcery with mana value 2 or less.
Trinket Mage and Tribute Mage: creatures that find an artifact with mana value 1 or less, or exactly 2. Mana rocks like Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are common targets.
Muddle the Mixture: a counterspell that can transmute for any card with mana value 2.

Green: creatures and lands

Eldritch Evolution and Neoform: sacrifice a creature to put a bigger one onto the battlefield.
Fierce Empath: a creature that finds a creature with mana value 6 or more.
Tooth and Nail: find two creatures, put two onto the battlefield, or both.
Primal Command: choose two, including finding a creature.
Sylvan Scrying and colourless Expedition Map: find any land, including your best utility land.

White and red

Open the Armory: finds an Aura or an Equipment. Excellent in Voltron decks; see our Voltron guide.
Godo, Bandit Warlord: puts an Equipment onto the battlefield when it enters.
Red has very few real tutors; it relies on card draw and impulse draw instead.

The expensive tutors, and Game Changers

Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Imperial Seal, Gamble, Survival of the Fittest, Natural Order and Crop Rotation are all Game Changers: each one counts toward a deck's bracket. They are better because they are cheaper to cast, not because they find more. For a bracket 2 or 3 deck, the list above does the same job a turn later.