Sorare Card Levels Explained [Why XP Matters]

Sorare card levels are an important factor in determining your success on the leaderboards.

As you use eligible cards, they can earn XP and progress through levels. This can increase the scoring bonus attached to the card, meaning a more developed card can contribute more points from the same underlying player performance.

I didn’t pay much attention to XP when I joined Sorare in 2022. Player selection seemed far more important (and it still is). But once you start building competitive lineups regularly, small advantages begin to add up.

In this guide, I’ll explain how levels and XP work and how leveling affects lineup scores.

We’ll also look at the practical side. Should you pay more for a leveled card? How much should XP influence your lineup decisions? And is trying to level up every card toward its maximum XP potential actually worth worrying about?

What Are Sorare Card Levels?

Card levels on Sorare are a progression system designed for Pro cards. This means they’re used by Limited, Rare, Super Rare, and Unique scarcities – but not the free-to-play Common cards. As an eligible card earns XP, it moves through levels and can receive a higher scoring bonus.

The level belongs to the individual card, not the footballer. You could own two cards of the same player and scarcity, yet one may have a higher level because it has accumulated more XP.

I think of levels as development for the card itself. The footballer still does the important work on the pitch… you’re simply improving the bonus attached to your version of him.

How does the Sorare card leveling system work?

Each eligible collectible card can accumulate XP over time. Once it earns enough XP to reach the next threshold, its level increases. That progression continues until the card reaches the maximum level available.

The important thing to understand is that progress isn’t linear. Reaching higher levels requires increasingly more XP, so pushing a card toward its maximum takes much longer than gaining its early levels.

We’ll look at exactly how cards earn XP and the requirements for each level in the next section.

Card levels vs player performance

A higher card level doesn’t improve the footballer behind the card.

Suppose your midfielder produces an underlying Sorare score of 60. A Level 10 card and a lower level card both start from that same real world performance and the difference comes from the applicable card bonus afterward.

This is why I wouldn’t choose a weak player simply because I found a highly leveled version of his card. Player performance still comes (and always will come) first. Card level simply improves what you already have.

A regular starter with a strong scoring profile is still far more important to me than squeezing another percentage point from someone I don’t trust!

Why the Sorare card levels matter

Levels matter because bonuses can increase the score a card contributes to your lineup.

One small bonus might not look important. Across several cards, however, those additional points can start adding up.

And Sorare competitions aren’t always decided by huge margins. I’ve had plenty of Game Weeks where a single point separated me from winning a competition or at least finishing on a podium. When rankings are that close, it’s better to have that small extra bonus than not.

That doesn’t mean you should build your entire strategy around high-level cards. Good matchup selection, expected minutes on the pitch, and recent form still matter much more.

It’s best to see card levels as an extra edge. First build a lineup of players you actually want. Then XP helps you get a little more from those cards as you continue using them.

A closer look at XP on Sorare

XP is the experience attached to an individual Sorare card. Your card starts at Level 0 and can progress through 10 levels by accumulating XP points.

Each new level adds another 1% XP Bonus. A Level 1 card gets 1%, Level 5 gets 5%, and a fully leveled Level 10 card gets the maximum 10% XP Bonus.

Reaching Level 10 isn’t quick, though. You need 31,200 accumulated XP to fully level a card.

I’m fortunate enough to have a number of fully-leveled cards in my gallery. An example of such card is Rare Arda Güler which you can see below.

How much XP do you need for each Sorare card level?

The XP requirement increases as your card develops. Early levels come relatively quickly, while the final few require much more XP.

Let’s look at the table below.

Level	XP to Next Level	Accumulated XP	XP Bonus
0	0	0	0%
1	200	200	1%
2	400	600	2%
3	600	1,200	3%
4	1,000	2,200	4%
5	1,500	3,700	5%
6	2,000	5,700	6%
7	3,000	8,700	7%
8	5,000	13,700	8%
9	7,500	21,200	9%
10	10,000	31,200	10%

As you can see, the progression gets much slower near the top. You need only 600 accumulated XP to reach Level 2, but reaching Level 8 requires 13,700 XP.

Then comes the serious challenge because Level 9 requires 21,200 accumulated XP, while Level 10 requires 31,200.

In other words, getting a card to 5% is one thing. Fully developing it to 10% is a much longer project 🙂

How Do You Earn XP for Your Sorare Cards?

In Sorare Football, there are now two main ways to build XP on your cards:

• Cards can earn XP when you use them in competition lineups
• and you can earn separate XP rewards that go into your XP Reserve

That second part is important because it’s relatively new (introduced in 2025). You don’t have to level every card only by repeatedly playing it anymore. You can save XP in your Reserve and choose which cards you want to develop faster 🙂

Playing cards in competitions

Your cards continue to earn XP when you use them in eligible competition lineups.

Sorare uses a simple formula for Football: XP earned by each card = lineup total base score ÷ 5.

The base score means your lineup score before XP, collection, scarcity, captain, and other card bonuses are added.

For example, imagine your five players produce base scores of 45, 52, 61, 68, and 74. That’s a combined base score of 300. Divide 300 by five, and each card in that lineup earns 60 XP.

Below I’ve highlighted the base score of a card.

As you can see, the total points collected by this team is 536 but if you add the numbers you see below the player cards, the actual total would be 421. This is because the base scores of cards are then boosted by whatever bonus applies to the lineup as a collective and each card individually.

Taking into consideration the whole lineup score instead of an individual player also creates an interesting detail: the XP you win from your lineup depends on the performance of the entire lineup, not only the individual card’s score.

If your defender scores 40 but his teammates push the lineup’s combined base score to 350, the calculation gives each card 70 XP.

XP earned from leaderboards

You can also earn XP as a Game Week reward and store it in your XP Reserve.

Under Sorare Football’s current system, every In Season Prize Pool awards from 500 XP to 1000XP as the lowest form of rewards on the leaderboards.

Below you can see an example of it in the SPFL competition I’m taking part in.

Here it’s worth nothing that XP isn’t automatically added to one of the five cards you entered, or divided amongst the whole lineup. It goes into your Reserve, allowing you to decide which individual card you want to boost.

Your XP Reserve has a maximum capacity of 30,000 XP per scarcity. Sorare warns you when you’re approaching the limit, so there isn’t much reason to leave a full Reserve sitting unused.

XP earned in Daily Missions

If you have enough cards in your gallery, you can probably earn additional XP on a daily basis thanks to the Daily Missions.

To explore the Daily Missions sector, click the button I’ve highlighted in the screenshot below.

You’ll then see the whole list of Daily Missions for today. As you can see below, two out of three missions reward us with XP boosts.

The Daily Mission that appears every day of the week is the Decisive Picker (the last one on the screenshot above). In this mission, you’re asked to pick 3 players participating in games during that day which you think will score a decisive action in their matches.

Decisive actions are:

• scoring a goal
• providing an assist
• making a last man tackle
• clearing the ball off the line
• keeping a clean sheet (exclusively goalkeepers)

You can get additional 200XP per each correctly called player.

Using your XP Reserve

As already mentioned, you can allocate stored XP to selected cards.

To check your current XP balance for each scarcity, click the icon I’ve highlighted below.

You will now be redirected to a page designed to level up your cards, using the XP reserve you’ve collected.

To boost an individual card, you need to have the required amount of XP in your reserve to take the card to the next level.

Below I’m showing the process of boosting my Kim Min-Jae’s Rare card. All you need to do is click on the highlighted button!

Once the card levels up, its so-called cooldown period begins. You must wait for that cooldown to finish before leveling the card again.

The cooldown has been introduced by Sorare to avoid managers with big budgets boosting all their cards to the maximum level in a very short space of time.

As things stand, the cooldown periods for each level are the following:

• boosting from level 0 to level 1 = 1 day
• from level 1 to level 2 – 1 week
• from level 2 to level 3 – 2 weeks
• from level 3 to level 4 – 2 weeks
• from level 4 to level 5 – 2 weeks
• from level 5 to level 6 – 2 weeks
• from level 6 to level 7 – 4 weeks
• from level 7 to level 8 – 4 weeks
• from level 8 to level 9 – 6 weeks
• from level 9 to 10 – XP maxxed out

💡 My rule of thumb: only boost your best cards. Most successful managers follow this strategy to be more competitive at the higher end of the leaderboards.

Other ways to earn XP

Sorare can also distribute XP through Special Events and other promotions or gameplay opportunities.

These additional sources can change over time, so I wouldn’t build an XP strategy around one temporary event. Competition lineups and XP Reserve rewards are the parts I’d understand first.

What Happens to XP When You Buy or Sell a Card?

XP belongs to the individual card, but there is one major catch when ownership changes.

🚨 When a Sorare card is sold or traded on the secondary market, its accumulated XP is reduced by 50%.

This can (and in most cases will) also lower the card’s level. So when you’re buying a developed card from another manager, you need to consider what its XP will look like after the transfer.

For example, imagine a Level 6 card has exactly 5,700 accumulated XP. If another manager buys it, the XP falls to 2,850.

That places the card above the 2,200 XP required for Level 4, but below the 3,700 required for Level 5. Its level therefore drops from Level 6 to Level 4. This means the XP Bonus falls with it, from 6% to 4%.

The rule above applies both to instances when you’re the seller, or when you’re buying a card from another manager.

Can XP affect a Sorare card’s market value?

It can and very often does. When I buy Classic cards from the secondary market, I only consider cards at level 9-10 pre-purchase.

A highly developed card has obvious gameplay value to its current owner because it can provide a larger XP Bonus.

💡 PRO TIP: Still thinking about joining the game? Use my Sorare invite code “SORARECEO” to get the best-in-the-web welcome bonus.

Imagine two otherwise similar cards: one has 600 XP at Level 2, while another has 31,200 XP at Level 10.

The Level 10 card is much more developed. After a secondary market sale, however, its 31,200 XP becomes 15,600 XP, leaving it at Level 8 rather than Level 10. But that’s still a lot of saved time and resources to get the card to that level on your own!

How Important Are Card Levels in Practice?

Sorare card levels matter, but I I’d never put XP ahead of an optimal player selection. A higher level improves the card you already own but it doesn’t fix poor playing time, weak scoring, or a bad matchup in the upcoming fixture.

That said, once you’re comparing good players and competitive lineups, XP becomes much more interesting. A developed card can give you extra points every time you use it.

New cards vs fully leveled cards

The difference between Level 0 and Level 10 Sorare card is straightforward: 0% XP Bonus versus 10% XP Bonus.

Take a player who produces a base score of 70. A Level 0 card receives nothing from XP, while Level 10 adds 7 points from its 10% XP Bonus. Do that across several cards and the difference becomes difficult to ignore.

But getting there requires 31,200 accumulated XP. You also need to work through increasingly long cooldown periods as the card progresses.

That’s why I don’t expect every card in my gallery to reach Level 10. Developing cards I regularly use makes much more sense than chasing maximum levels everywhere.

XP when building competitive lineups

XP becomes more important when the margins between lineups become smaller.

Imagine you’re choosing between two similar players before buying just one. Both start games regularly, have comparable scoring profiles, and fit the same competition. One card gives you a 2% XP Bonus while the other gives you 8%. Now the card level gives me a genuine reason to prefer one option.

The same applies when I’m deciding between cards I already own. If everything else looks close, I’ll happily take the extra percentage points from the more developed card.

However, I wouldn’t bench a clearly better footballer simply because another card has more XP.

A Level 10 card scoring 40 receives 4 extra points from XP. A Level 0 card scoring 70 starts 30 points ahead before that bonus even enters the conversation.

The actual football performance is still the most important factor. That’s why I care about Sorare card levels but I don’t plan on building my entire strategy around them. XP won’t make your lineup good… but it can make an already good lineup better.

For more newbie-friendly information on the game, read my updated Sorare tutorial for beginners.