Hitster Card Generators Compared: Which One Should You Use?

Bopster (bopster.app) is the most complete free browser tool. It imports from Spotify, YouTube and YouTube Music, Deezer, Apple Music and TIDAL, which is the widest list here, and its "Yearify" feature checks your songs against Bopster's own database so you can catch remaster dates before you print. There are more than 60 card designs, a community library of shared playlists, and a live mode that casts to a TV or Chromecast. It is free, funded by ads and one-time donations from 3 euro, with no subscription. The interface is in five languages.

Digibitz (digibitz.nl/hitster-kaarten) is the smallest thing on this list and does exactly one job: paste a Spotify playlist URL, wait, download the fronts, print them, put the paper back in and print the backs. No account, no options, no cost. One thing to know before you print: the page says outright that its QR codes cannot be scanned with the Hitster app, you have to use the Digibitz scanner.

Guess My Playlist (guessmyplaylist.com) turns a Spotify playlist link into QR cards or music bingo cards with no login at all, up to 400 songs. It is the one tool here with no free tier: its own FAQ prices a game at 14,95 euro, for the QR card set as well as for 100 bingo cards.

WhiteShunpo/hitster-card-generator is the friendliest of the four open source projects. Python with a Streamlit interface, MIT licensed, and it needs no Spotify developer key at all because it reads public Spotify pages, which covers playlists up to roughly 100 tracks (API credentials lift the cap). Output is a duplex A4 PDF of 5 x 5 cm cards, 20 to a page, and you can correct release years by hand in a table before generating. The project also publishes a hosted Streamlit build.

JonasScholl/hitster is the most polished script. Python 3.12 with Poetry, MIT, several print themes, cut marks, and a year distribution chart so you can balance the deck across decades. It is the only one that reads Apple Music as well as Spotify, although the Apple side needs a paid Apple Developer membership for the MusicKit key. Scanned cards resolve on the author's own web player. Its README notes that Spotify deprecated preview URLs, so most songs now play from the start of the full track instead of a clip.

fjlein/hitster is the minimal one. Python plus Typst for the layout, a Spotify client ID and secret, one command, one hitster.pdf. Card size and page grid are a couple of variables in a Typst file, so it is the easiest to fork if you want your own layout. Its QR codes open Spotify directly, which means whoever scans sees the title and the cover art, so the scanner must not be the one guessing.

ruuda/hitsgame is the odd one out and the right answer for one specific person: somebody with a properly tagged local music library who does not want a streaming service in the game at all. It reads FLAC files (TITLE, ARTIST and ORIGINALDATE tags), transcodes them, and produces both a card PDF and a folder of anonymised audio to upload to your own webserver, which is where the QR codes point. GPLv3. It needs ffmpeg, rsvg-convert and somewhere to host files, so it asks the most of you and hands back the most independence.

Hitify is ours, so read this paragraph knowing that. The first 100 cards are a free PDF with no account. It imports from Spotify, YouTube Music and Tidal, and not from Apple Music or Deezer, where Bopster is genuinely ahead of us. Release years are verified against MusicBrainz by ISRC rather than trusted from the streaming service. The QR codes scan with a plain phone camera, there are five card styles, you can order printed cards instead of printing at home, and the site runs in 16 languages.

• You write code and want no signup: take one of the four GitHub projects, not us. fjlein/hitster is the shortest path from a playlist to a PDF, WhiteShunpo skips the Spotify developer key entirely, and JonasScholl gives you print themes and a decade histogram. None of them will ever email you.
• Your music lives on Apple Music or Deezer: use Bopster. We do not import either one, and it does.
• You want no streaming service in the game: ruuda/hitsgame, if you have tagged local files and somewhere to host them. It is the only tool here that produces a deck nobody else can switch off.
• You want it done in five minutes: any of the browser tools. Digibitz is the fastest if all you want is paper and you are happy to use its scanner.
• You would rather play on a TV than print anything: Bopster Live.
• You want music bingo instead of a timeline: Guess My Playlist, at 14,95 euro.
• The years have to be right, you want a language other than English, or you want the cards printed and posted to you: that is the gap we built Hitify for.