A car collecting game for iPhone
Spot it.
Scan it.
Race it.
Every car you pass on the street is a card waiting to be caught. Photograph real cars with the in-app camera, build a collection ranked by how many were actually made, then send your best five into automated races.
The loop
How it works
Three steps, always in this order. You can't race a car you haven't seen with your own eyes.
Spot
Walk, drive, wait at a red light. Anything on four wheels in the real world can be caught: a daily commuter, a weekend roadster, a supercar parked downtown.
Scan
Take the photo with the StreetCaught camera and frame the car. An AI identifies the make and model, then the card lands in your garage with its real specs, its rarity and a random finish. When it can't tell two generations apart, you pick the right one: you're the one looking at the car.
Race
Pick five cards for five events. You don't drive: the race is simulated from each car's stats, the track and the surface. Your job is choosing the right car for each event.
Rule 1 · Rarity
Rarity comes from the factory
A card's tier is set by how many units of that generation were really built. It never depends on luck or on the player. Common cars are common because the streets are full of them.
| Tier | Units produced | Neon glow | Typical cars | Scan XP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 300,001+ | None | High-volume sedans and SUVs | 10 |
| Uncommon | 100,001 – 300,000 | None | Everyday models late in their run | 20 |
| Rare | 20,001 – 100,000 | None | Production sports cars | 40 |
| Epic | 3,001 – 20,000 | Violet | Focused sports cars | 90 |
| Legendary | 1,001 – 3,000 | Gold, sweeping | Supercars | 210 |
| Mythic | 51 – 1,000 | Red, sweeping | Hypercars | 510 |
| One-off | 50 or fewer | Pink, sweeping | One-offs and prototypes | 1,200 |
From Epic up, the card glows in its tier color. From Legendary up, a brighter spot slowly travels around the frame. The first time you catch a model, its XP is tripled.
Classics get a wooden frame
A car becomes a classic 30 years after its generation stopped being built. The end of production counts, not the start, so even the last car off the line is 30. Nobody picks favourites: it's an age, and every January 1st another year of cars joins the club.
A classic trades its tier border for a thicker wooden frame with real grain. The tier still shows in the text, the glow and the word at the bottom of the card.
| Classic today | Built until | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Ferrari F40 | 1992 | Mythic |
| Lamborghini Countach LP400 | 1978 | Mythic |
| BMW M3 (E30) | 1991 | Legendary |
| DeLorean DMC-12 | 1983 | Mythic |
237 models in the catalog are classics today.
Where the real production figure is unknown, the card carries a small EST. badge. Estimated entries never land above Rare: the top tiers are reserved for the 259 cars whose numbers have been checked by hand. A figure that only counts US sales, not worldwide production, can lift a card to Rare at most.
Rule 2 · Finishes
Two things on every card
Rarity belongs to the car. The finish belongs to your copy, rolled fresh on every scan. A holo Corolla is possible, and that's on purpose. The border tells you the tier, the background tells you the finish.
Finish odds per scan
The background wears the tier
Carbon, Forged and Holo cards take the colour of the car's tier. A Legendary holo glows gold, a Mythic forged card has red resin flakes. Gold and Silver keep their brushed metal.
A second roll on top
One card in a hundred that already has a finish also gets a holo foil laid over it: a Gold Holo, a Carbon Holo. It keeps its own background and adds the foil that lights up when the light passes. On a Minimal card it shows as a ★.
Tilt to see it
A holo foil only shows inside the band of light that crosses the card when you tilt your phone. Carbon is a material: you see it even in the shade, and the light adds a shine on top. Holo patterns carry a number from 0 to 999, so no two copies shine the same way.
Full or Minimal
Full shows everything: the car picture running edge to edge with its name printed on it, generation and year, the four stats with bars, the real specs (0-100 km/h, top speed, power, torque, redline, drive, fuel, units built) and the money block (MSRP and market range).
Minimal keeps only what you need to pick a car: the picture with the model name, the drivetrain, the four stats and the Power. That's the view for comparing five cars at a glance. Switch between them in the garage.
Power and its letter
The number in the bottom corner is the car's Power, from 20 to 100. It's what counts against your hand budget. The letter says the same thing at a glance:
| Letter | F | E | D | C | B | A | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power | 20–39 | 40–49 | 50–59 | 60–69 | 70–79 | 80–89 | 90+ |
Finishes are cosmetic. They never change race stats, so scanning the same car every day doesn't buy you speed.
Rule 3 · Racing
Real specs in, four stats out
Every card lists the car's real figures: 0–100 km/h, top speed, power, torque, redline, drivetrain. The game turns them into four stats from 1 to 100.
A real race from the game
Hill climb · Snow
Same six tracks, physics and cars as the app. Pick an event, the weather and two cars: on the snowy hill climb, a supercar with 105 mm of ground clearance and performance tires doesn't get far, while on the dry ring or the oval raw top speed wins.
Rule 4 · Campaign
Six countries, one new problem each
Ten levels per country, five races per level. The events and the rival's hand are fixed, so you can study them before you pick your five cards. Each country opens at a player level and adds one condition you haven't had to handle yet.
| Country | What it adds | Opens at level | Power cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | Dry asphalt only. Learn the events. | 1 | 275 |
| United States | Rain and long straights | 6 | 300 |
| Japan | Tight mountain roads, at night | 11 | 325 |
| Germany | Flat-out top speed, no limit | 16 | 350 |
| Sweden | Snow and ice | 21 | 375 |
| United Kingdom | Dirt and forest rally stages | 26 | 450 |
Share of the points
Stars come from your share of the points, not the number of events won. Dominating three events beats scraping four. Three stars need 80% of the points.
A part at levels 5 and 10
Three stars on level 5 and level 10 of a country earn a part, the first time only. The level 10 part comes with much better odds.
United Kingdom, level 10
The last level of the campaign gives a guaranteed Legendary part. Elsewhere, only an event podium can roll one.
Coming back to an early country with a stronger garage? Your hand is capped at that country's Power, so it stays a real race.
Rule 5 · Events
Two weekly tournaments
The campaign rewards progress. Events reward a wide garage. Every Monday two new challenges open, one easy and one hard, and each one asks for five different cars that all meet the same condition.
About a third of the catalog fits
Uncommon or better, all-wheel drive, or cars built in the USA, Japan or Germany. A garage of thirty cars usually has five that qualify.
- Tournament prize400 coins · 200 XP
- 1st place partRare or better
- 2nd and 3rdUncommon or better
About one car in fifteen fits
Rare or better, Toyota only, BMW only, or built in the United Kingdom. You need to have looked for these cars to line up five.
- Tournament prize1,200 coins · 600 XP
- 1st place partEpic or better
- 2nd placeRare or better
- 3rd placeUncommon or better
A live standings board
Eight rivals sit on the board, from −8 to +8 points. You enter in the middle at zero. Each race is against the rival just above you.
Eight races, blind hands
You never see the rival's cars before the start, so you build a hand instead of answering one. Winning earns stars that the rival loses, and losing works the other way, so the board reshuffles after every race.
Podium pays once
After the eighth race, your place is final. The top three win a part: 80% at the promised tier, 15% one tier up, 5% two tiers up. A hard-event win can drop a Legendary.
An event race costs one fuel, like a campaign race. Rivals are calibrated on your best legal hand at the start of the week, so a car you catch or a part you fit mid-week shows up as places on the board.
Rule 6 · Friends
Challenge a friend with a code
No server, no account. You set the rules, pick your five cars, and the game turns it all into a short code. Send it by text, Discord or anything else. Your friend pastes it, picks five cars without seeing yours, and the race plays out on their phone.
Set the rules
A Power cap, one car rule (any car, a drivetrain, a rarity, one make or one country) and the five events with their weather. Draw them at random or pick each one.
Pick your hand
Your cars travel with their upgrades and parts, and with their finish: a holo card arrives as that same holo, same pattern number.
Send the code
Your friend pastes it in Friends → Join a game. Both phones compute exactly the same result from the same code, so nobody can argue about who won.
The Power cap replaces both players' own limit, and it can go up to 500, higher than anyone reaches by leveling. A level 5 player and a level 40 player race with exactly the same budget, and it's the only place in the game where the five most expensive cars fit in one hand.
Want your friend to see your actual photos? Tap Send with photos instead: the challenge goes out as a small .streetcaught file that opens straight in the app. Cards that came from a pack show their silhouette.
Rule 7 · Daily quests
Three quests, every day
Quests are the first tab of the app. Every day at midnight UTC you get three: one easy, one medium, one hard. There's always something you can finish in twenty minutes, and always one worth going out for.
Just play
Catch 2 cars, or run 2 races. Whatever you were going to do today anyway.
Look around
Catch 3 cars of one body style (SUVs, coupes, pickups…) or one drivetrain (RWD, AWD, FWD, 4WD). Or catch 5 cars, or run 6 races.
Go hunting
Catch 3 of one make, 2 cars Uncommon or better or Rare or better, 4 of one drivetrain, or win 3 races in a row. A loss resets that last one to zero.
You see the reward before you start
| Quest | Coins | Common | Uncommon | Rare | Epic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 200 | 80% | 17% | 3% | — |
| Medium | 650 | 52% | 32% | 13% | 3% |
| Hard | 1,600 | 26% | 34% | 28% | 12% |
Each quest pays either coins or a random part, and the card tells you which before you start. Part odds climb with difficulty. Quests never give a Legendary: that stays the reward for finishing the campaign.
Three a day
A quest you can't finish, like "Catch 3 BMW" in a neighborhood without any, can be swapped. Watch an ad for three new quests, up to three times a day. New quests start from zero.
One car, two quests
A single catch counts for every quest it fits. An AWD Subaru moves "Catch 5 cars" and "Catch 3 AWD cars" at the same time. Makes in quests are ones you see everywhere: Toyota, Honda, Ford, BMW and the like.
Rule 8 · The Workshop
Upgrade, merge, fit parts
Duplicates aren't wasted. Catch the same model again, any generation, and it becomes fuel for the Workshop. Everything is stored per model: if you own three Civics, you sacrifice two to upgrade "the Civic", and that's the one you race.
Three axes, three levels each
More power.
Level 1 opens the Turbo slot
Level 3 opens the Transmission slot
Less mass.
Level 1 opens the Carbon slot
Level 3 opens the Wheels slot
More cornering grip, better brakes.
Level 1 opens the Suspension slot
Level 3 opens the Aero slot
| Level | Engine power | Weight | Chassis grip | Duplicates | Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +4% | −4% | +4% | 1 | Power × 11 |
| 2 | +9% | −9% | +9% | 2 | Power × 27 |
| 3 | +15% | −15% | +15% | 3 | Power × 63 |
Coin costs follow the car's Power, so tuning a hypercar costs far more than tuning a city car. A tuned car's Power goes up too: faster in one event, less room in your hand for the other four.
Parts are real hardware
A part never says "better in the rain". It changes something physical (power, mass, top speed, downforce, launch traction, braking, tire grip on each surface) and the race physics decides where that pays off. A GT wing adds downforce, which helps in corners. A drag race has no corners, so there it only costs you drag.
Five tiers, one bigger bonus
Parts come in Common ×1, Uncommon ×1.3, Rare ×1.7, Epic ×2.3 and Legendary ×3. The tier multiplies the bonus, never the penalty: a Legendary slick grips better on dry asphalt and slides exactly as much on snow. From Epic up, most parts become different hardware, like a twin turbo instead of a single.
Six big, two small
Each big slot takes its own family: turbo, transmission, carbon, wheels, suspension, aero. Small slots take brakes, an exhaust or a set of tires. Every car has one small slot from the start, and a second one can be bought for a single model. A part can only sit on one car at a time.
Won after races
Races drop parts up to Epic: Common 56%, Uncommon 28%, Rare 12%, Epic 4%. Legendary parts never drop from ordinary races. You get one by winning the last level of the campaign, or with luck on an event podium.
Rule 9 · The Shop
Three parts a day
The Shop puts three parts on the shelf every 24 hours, each from a different family. Don't like them? Watch an ad to reroll, up to three times a day. That counter is separate from your gauges, so an ad watched for fuel never costs you a reroll.
| Tier | Price | On the shelf |
|---|---|---|
| Common | 300 coins | Often |
| Uncommon | 800 coins | Regularly |
| Rare | 2,000 coins | Sometimes |
| Epic | 6,000 coins | Rarely |
| Legendary | — | Never sold. Earned in the campaign only. |
The shelf comes from the day itself, so closing and reopening the app never reshuffles it.
Rule 10 · Energy & fair play
Two gauges, one honest camera
Scanning and racing each draw from their own gauge. Both fill back up to the top once a day.
Photos
- Maximum
- 10
- Refill
- Full refill every 24 h
- Rewarded ad
- +3
- Used for
- Sending a photo to the AI
Fuel
- Maximum
- 10
- Refill
- Full refill every 24 h
- Rewarded ad
- +3
- Used for
- Starting a match
Up to 5 rewarded ads per day. Taking, framing or discarding a photo is free. A charge goes the moment the AI answers, whatever it says, because every answer costs a real call. If the photo never reaches it (no signal, server down, unreadable file), nothing is charged.
Garage and workshop space
100 cars
When the garage is full, the scan stops before anything is sent, so you never lose a charge to a full garage. Delete a card to make room: the copy is gone for good, but the car stays in your Dex.
100 parts
A full workshop can't take a new part from a quest or a race reward. Delete parts you'll never fit. If the last copy is fitted to a car, the game warns you first that the car loses it.
Leveling up
+5 per level
250 at level 1, up to 450 at level 41. It's the only thing that opens races you couldn't enter the day before.
100 × the level
200 coins for level 2, 3,000 for level 30.
A part every 5 levels
Common or better before level 10, then Uncommon, Rare, and Epic or better from level 30.
Fair play rules
- In-app camera only. No importing from your photo library.
- No photos of screens or prints. The scan is refused with a clear message.
- No reused photos. Each image is fingerprinted.
- One scan per car, per place, per 24 hours. Same model, within about 50 m, very similar photo. You can still take the picture; it just won't create a new card.
- Soft signals like time, motion sensors and scans per hour help spot automation.
- Graduated penalties: a warning, then a scanning pause, then removal from the leaderboard.
Questions
FAQ
When can I play?
StreetCaught is in active development and runs on test devices today. It will launch on iPhone first, in English, with French and Spanish to follow.
Can I scan a photo I found online or took earlier?
No. Cards only come from the in-app camera, live. The whole point of a card is that you saw that car yourself.
Why was my scan refused?
Usually one of four reasons: the photo looks like a screen or a print, the car isn't in the catalog yet, the AI wasn't sure enough (try another angle), or you already scanned that car in the same spot in the last 24 hours. Once the AI has answered, the scan uses a charge, even on a refusal. If the photo never got to it, nothing is charged.
The AI picked the wrong car. What now?
Tap "Not this car". You can pick another generation of the same model, keep the card anyway, or try another photo. When the AI can't tell generations apart, it asks you to choose from up to five instead of guessing.
Does a holo or gold card race faster?
No. Finishes are purely cosmetic. Races depend on the car's stats, its upgrades, the event and the surface.
How do you know how many cars were built?
259 entries are checked by hand against real, worldwide production figures for each generation. For the rest, the figure is estimated and the card shows an EST. badge. Estimated cars, and cars known only by their US sales, never go above Rare.
What happens if I delete a card?
The card is gone, but the car stays marked as seen in your Dex forever. There's no trash to restore it from. The garage holds 100 cars, so deleting is how you make room.
How do daily quests work?
Three a day, one easy, one medium, one hard, reset at midnight UTC. Each shows its reward up front: coins or a random part, up to Epic. Stuck on one? Watch an ad for three new quests, up to three times a day.
Do parts really make a car faster?
Yes. Parts change the car's real physics (power, weight, downforce, braking, tire grip), and the race simulation uses those numbers directly. A fully tuned car is roughly 11% faster for a Common and 20% for a Legendary. The right tires for the surface matter as much as raw power.
How do I get a Legendary part?
A guaranteed one for winning level 10 of the United Kingdom, the last level of the campaign, with three stars. An event podium can also roll one. Ordinary races and the Shop stop at Epic.
What's the point of duplicates?
Duplicates of the same model, any generation, are merged in the Workshop to upgrade that car: 1, then 2, then 3 duplicates plus coins per level. Each new copy is also another roll at a rare finish.
Why can't I put my five best cars in one hand?
Every car has a Power value and your hand has a Power budget tied to your level: 250 at level 1, +5 per level, up to 450 at level 41. Five top cars won't fit. Spend the budget where the event needs it most.
Can I race my friends?
Yes. In Friends, set the rules and your hand, and send the code the game gives you. Your friend pastes it and races it on their phone. No account needed. Send it as a file instead and your photos travel with the cards.
Does the app share my location?
No. Location is optional and only marks roughly where you caught a car on your own capture map. It stays on your phone. See the privacy policy.
How do I contact you?
Write to [email protected], or see the support page for quick fixes. Bug reports, a car missing from the catalog, a wrong production figure, or just an idea: everything lands in the same inbox.
Is it free?
Yes, free to download and play. Optional rewarded ads refill your gauges, and coin packs will be available to buy.
Photo credits
Car photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses, resized and cropped for the cards. Click a license to see the original file.
- Honda Civic FE1 1.5 V Turbo Morning Mist Blue Metallic 01 — Ethan Llamas, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 2015 Mazda MX-5 ND 2.0 SKYACTIV-G 160 i-ELOOP Rubinrot-Metallic Vorderansicht — Kickaffe (Mario von Berg), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Toyota GR86 Sonoma 2023 — TaurusEmerald, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Aston Martin DB11 Volante AM5 Aston Martin Racing Green (4) — Damian B Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0
- HondaS2000-004 — Rich Niewiroski Jr., CC BY 2.5
- 1993 Toyota Supra (JZA80) Coupe — Coolalabright, CC BY 4.0
- Lexus LFA (49944546063) — Rutger van der Maar, CC BY 2.0
- Porsche 918 Spyder IAA 2013 — Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de
- Nissan Skyline GT-R R34, 09-21-2025 — 2000chevymontecarlo, CC BY-SA 4.0
- BMW E30 M3 — FotoSleuth, CC BY 2.0
- F40 Ferrari 20090509 — Will ainsworth, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Delorean DMC-12 side — Kevin Abato, www.grenexmedia.com, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Lamborghini Huracan Evo, GIMS 2019, Le Grand-Saconnex (GIMS1010) — Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 21 Ford Bronco — HJUdall, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 2024 Honda Civic Type R, front right, 06-15-2024 — MercurySable99, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 2022 Subaru WRX Sport-Tech in World Rally Blue Pearl, Front Left, 06-03-2022 — Elise240SX, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 1998 Subaru Impreza 22B STi — MrWalkr, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Porsche 992 GT3 with touring package 1X7A1548 — Alexander-93, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 22 Tesla Model S Plaid — HJUdall, CC0
- Jeep Wrangler (JL) Washington DC Metro Area, USA (7) — OWS Photography, CC BY 4.0
- Land Rover Defender 110 D40 SE L663 Pangea Green (1) (cropped) — Damian B Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Bugatti Chiron Royal Blue — MrWalkr, CC BY-SA 4.0