Cribbage Scoring Calculator
Pick your cribbage hand and the starter card to instantly score every fifteen, pair, run, flush and nobs — with a crib toggle and a full breakdown.
Hand
Starter (the cut)
Score
Total: 0
Pick four hand cards and a starter to see the score.
How it works
Build each card by tapping its rank and then its suit: the first four cards you build are your hand, and the fifth is the starter (the cut card). Flip "Scoring the crib" on if you're scoring the dealer's crib instead of a regular hand — it changes how the flush is scored. As soon as all five cards are chosen, the calculator lists every fifteen, pair, run, flush and nobs point it found, each with its own description, and adds them up into a total.
Set up a hand the way you would at the table — four cards for the hand and one starter card from the cut — and this calculator works out every point exactly the way a human scorer would, showing its reasoning so you can check it against your own count.
What counts as a hand here
Four hand cards plus the starter make five cards in total. The starter counts toward fifteens, pairs, runs and nobs the same as any hand card — the only place hand and starter are treated differently is the flush, and only when you have the “Scoring the crib” toggle on.
Fifteens
Every combination of cards — not just pairs or triples, any subset of the five cards at all — whose values add up to exactly 15 scores 2 points. Aces count as 1, number cards count at face value, and jacks, queens and kings all count as 10. A hand can contain several different fifteens at once; each one scores its own 2 points.
Pairs
Any two cards of the same rank score 2 points, and every possible pairing in the hand counts separately. Three cards of the same rank make three different pairs (6 points), and all four of a rank make six pairs (12 points) — the calculator doesn’t treat “three of a kind” or “four of a kind” as their own bonus; it simply counts every pair there is. A ten and a king are both worth 10 points toward a fifteen, but they are different ranks, so they are never a pair.
Runs
A run is three or more cards of consecutive rank, regardless of suit, worth 1 point per card. If a rank in the run is duplicated — say two fives inside a 4-5-6 run — that counts as two separate three-card runs sharing the duplicated card, for 6 points instead of 3. The calculator always finds the longest run present and scores every distinct way to form it; it never scores a run of four and the three-card runs tucked inside it as separate bonuses.
Flush
Four points for having all four hand cards share one suit. If the starter also matches that suit, that’s a fifth point. In the crib specifically, a four-card flush does not score at all — the crib only scores a flush when all five cards, starter included, share a suit, for 5 points.
Nobs
One point for holding the jack whose suit matches the starter’s suit. This is separate from “his heels,” the dealer’s 2-point bonus for the starter itself being a jack at the moment of the cut — that happens before hand scoring starts, so it isn’t part of the total this calculator produces.
Frequently asked questions
How are cribbage hands scored?
A cribbage hand (your four cards plus the shared starter card) scores points for every fifteen — any combination of cards summing to 15, worth 2 points each — every pair of same-rank cards (2 points each), the longest run of consecutive ranks (1 point per card, counted for every distinct combination that forms it), a flush when enough cards share a suit, and 1 point for holding the jack that matches the starter's suit ("nobs"). All of these are added together for the hand's total.
What is the best possible cribbage hand?
The highest-scoring hand is "the 29 hand": three fives, a jack, and the fourth five as the starter (for example 5-5-5-J in hand with a fifth 5 as the starter, where the jack matches the starter's suit). It scores 16 for fifteens, 12 for the six pairs among the four fives, and 1 for nobs, for a total of 29 — the maximum any single hand can score.
Why does the crib score the flush differently?
Outside the crib, four cards of your own hand sharing a suit score 4 points on their own, with a fifth point if the starter also matches. The crib is built partly from cards your opponent chose to discard to you, not purely your own hand, so by the rules a flush only counts in the crib when all five cards — the four crib cards and the starter — share a suit. A four-card flush in the crib scores nothing.
What is nobs in cribbage?
Nobs (sometimes written "his nobs") is 1 point for holding the jack in your hand that matches the starter card's suit. It's easy to confuse with "his heels" (sometimes "his nibs"), which is a different, separate bonus: if the starter card itself turns out to be a jack, the dealer immediately scores 2 points at the moment of the cut. His heels happens before hand-scoring even begins and isn't part of scoring the hand itself, so this calculator only scores nobs.