You're probably here because something asked you for a size. A printer's upload form, a template, a friend who said "just make them poker size". This page is the answer in every unit you'll need, with enough context that the next time a tool asks, you can pick without guessing.
The standard playing card sizes
All pixel figures are at 300 DPI, the resolution every card printer asks for. The last column is the file a print-on-demand printer actually wants: the card plus an eighth of an inch of bleed on every edge.
| Size | Inches | Millimetres | Pixels (cut) | Pixels (with bleed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poker | 2.5 x 3.5 | 63.5 x 88.9 | 750 x 1050 | 825 x 1125 |
| Bridge | 2.25 x 3.5 | 57.2 x 88.9 | 675 x 1050 | 750 x 1125 |
| Tarot | 2.75 x 4.75 | 69.9 x 120.7 | 825 x 1425 | 900 x 1500 |
| Mini | 1.75 x 2.5 | 44.5 x 63.5 | 525 x 750 | 600 x 825 |
| Square | 3 x 3 | 76.2 x 76.2 | 900 x 900 | 975 x 975 |
| Large | 3.5 x 5 | 88.9 x 127 | 1050 x 1500 | 1125 x 1575 |
Poker is "standard". When someone says standard playing card size with no qualifier, they mean poker: 2.5 by 3.5 inches, or 63.5 by 88.9 mm. It's a casino deck, and it's also what the big trading card games use, give or take half a millimetre, which is why nearly every sleeve on earth fits it. If you have no reason to pick anything else, pick poker.
Bridge is a quarter inch narrower at the same height, so you can fan thirteen cards in one hand.
Tarot is the oversized one. Room for a big illustration or a paragraph of rules, at the cost of being awkward to shuffle.
Mini cards are for things you don't hold: resource tokens, small items, anything that sits on the table in stacks.
Square and large are specialists. Square cards make good tiles; large cards suit character sheets and references that never leave the table.
Bleed, safe zones and corners
A printer doesn't cut cards one at a time. It prints a sheet, then a blade comes down through a stack, and that blade wanders by up to a millimetre. Two rules absorb the wander:
- Bleed is an extra eighth of an inch (3.2 mm, or about 37 pixels at 300 DPI) of your background on every edge, outside the cut line. A blade that drifts outward cuts through background instead of leaving a white sliver. That's why a poker file is 825 by 1125 rather than 750 by 1050.
- The safe zone is the same eighth of an inch inside the cut line. Names, costs and rules text stay inside it, so a blade that drifts inward doesn't clip a letter.
Corners are rounded by the die, not by you. Leave your file's corners square; a poker card ends up with a radius of roughly an eighth of an inch, and the printer's overlay shows exactly where. The one time to round corners yourself is a digital export, where a transparent corner is what makes a card look like a card on screen.
Where 300 DPI comes from
DPI is dots per inch, and 300 is where printed text stops looking soft. Pixels are just inches multiplied by DPI, so the table extends itself: a 2.5 inch edge at 300 DPI is 750 pixels. Screens ignore DPI, which is how a huge-looking card can still print blurry. Build at 300 and you're safe everywhere.
Sizes for digital tabletops
Tabletop Simulator doesn't take individual cards. It takes one sheet with your cards in a grid, ten across and seven down, and its knowledge base recommends keeping that sheet under 4096 pixels on the long edge. Across ten columns that lands near 400 by 560 pixels per card, which keeps the 7:10 poker proportion. Roll20 has no fixed size, so the same ratio works there. The tools that build that sheet for you are compared in the best card game makers for Tabletop Simulator.
Sizes the printers actually want
Every print-on-demand printer publishes its own template, and they don't all agree on the millimetre. The Game Crafter's poker deck upload is exactly 825 by 1125 pixels, printed on 12 point, 320 gsm black-core matte stock. MakePlayingCards asks for the same eighth of an inch bleed at 300 DPI, so the same file works. When two printers disagree, the one whose template you downloaded wins. We compared them in the best print-on-demand card game printers.
Boxes have sizes too, and they depend on the card count. A poker tuck box for 36 cards is about 0.55 inches deep; one for 108 cards is 1.62 inches. Count your deck before you design the box.
Which size should you pick?
- A game people will shuffle and hold? Poker. Sleeves, boxes and every printer's cheapest option assume it.
- Players hold a dozen or more cards at once? Bridge.
- The art or the text is the point? Tarot.
- Cards that live on the table in stacks? Mini.
- Tiles, maps or reference cards? Square or large.
Choose before you design card one. A layout built at poker size doesn't move to tarot without every element shifting, and that's an afternoon you can skip.
In ShuffleKit these six sizes are presets, so a new deck starts at the right pixel count with the bleed and safe guides already drawn, and when you send it to print the file reaches The Game Crafter at the exact upload size it expects. It's free to start, and I'd rather you spent that afternoon on your cards. Start a deck at the right size.
