Skip to content
MangaTrace

Manga finding guides

Pick the guide that matches what you have. With a picture, follow the step-by-step method or the guide for your kind of image. With only a memory of the story, search by description. If SauceNAO or Google Lens came up empty, the engine guides explain why and where to search next.

Each guide says what we actually tested and what is general advice. Engine results are dated, and when a claim has not been measured yet, the guide says so. Every guide is written by Tahir Nazir and shows the date it was last updated.

You have a picture, screenshot or clip

Start here if you have any image at all, even a blurry one. The step-by-step guide is the full method; the others cover the situations where the picture needs extra work first: a phone screenshot, a frame from a video edit, or a photo of a book on your shelf.

  1. How to find a manga from a picture (step by step)The full method, from cropping the panel to reading the results.
  2. Reverse image search a manga on iPhone and AndroidiPhone and Android steps, from screenshot to title.
  3. Found a manga edit on TikTok or Instagram? How to get the titleGet a clean frame from an edit and turn it into a title.
  4. Find a manga by its cover, spine or ISBNCovers, spines and photos of physical volumes.

You only remember the story

No picture? An image search can't help, but what you remember can. Turn the type, genre and a few tropes into filters with find a manga by description, which searches AniList and shows matching titles with covers. If you are not sure whether it was a manga, manhwa or manhua, the explainer below settles that from a single page. The forgot-the-name guide puts both together, with a table that turns common tropes into the right tags.

  1. How to find a manga you forgot the name ofNo title, maybe no picture: turn what you remember into a search.
  2. Manga vs manhwa vs manhua: how to tell them apartTell them apart from one page, and why it changes how you search.

A search engine let you down

SauceNAO, Google Lens, IQDB and Yandex each index different images, so a miss on one says little about the others. These guides explain what each error message means, which engine to try instead for your kind of picture, and what we saw when we ran the same covers through each of them.

  1. How to use SauceNAO, and is it safe?How SauceNAO works, how to read its results, and what happens to your image.
  2. SauceNAO not working or down? Daily limit, no results and low similarity fixedDaily limit, no results and low similarity, explained and fixed.
  3. SauceNAO alternatives for manga and manhwa (tested)Which engine to use when SauceNAO is not enough, with a comparison table.
  4. Can Google Lens find a manga? Lens vs SauceNAO comparedSame six covers, two engines: where each one wins, and what is still untested.

How these guides are tested

We search real, official covers and titles with each engine and write down what comes back: the top result, the similarity score where there is one, and whether the series was right. Covers are the easy case, so the guides say plainly that black-and-white interior panels are still to be measured. Engines change their limits and layouts often, so we re-test and update the date when the copy changes. MangaTrace has no manga database of its own; it crops your picture and hands it to the engine you choose.

Ready to search?