Why the same CS2 skin costs different amounts on Steam, Buff163 and CSFloat

Look up one AK-47 | Redline in Minimal Wear on a Wednesday evening and every market gives you a different answer. On 21 Oct 2026 the cheapest one on Skinport was $117.62. The lowest listing on the Steam Community Market was $155.77. Same gun, same wear, a $38 gap.

Nobody is overcharging you, exactly. Each of those numbers is priced in a different kind of money, carries a different fee and sits in a market with a different number of buyers. Once you know which of those is doing the work, a CS2 skin price comparison stops being confusing and starts being useful, whether you are buying your first knife or deciding where to sell one.

The short answer: Steam prices are not cash prices

The single biggest reason for the gap is that a Steam price is paid in Steam Wallet money, and Steam Wallet money can't leave Steam. Third-party markets like CSFloat, Skinport and Buff163 deal in money you can withdraw. A dollar you can spend only on games and skins is worth less to most people than a dollar in the bank, so skins trade at a discount wherever the payment is real cash.

The figures from 21 Oct 2026 show the discount clearly. Comparing Steam's lowest listing with Skinport's lowest, both checked within a few minutes of each other on 21 Oct 2026:

Sources: Steam Community Market lowest listing and Skinport's public price data, both in USD, checked 21 Oct 2026 between 19:43 and 19:47 CEST.

That last row matters. Steam is usually dearest, but not by a fixed percentage, and a cheap knife with almost no listings can flip the pattern entirely. More on that under liquidity.

Why Steam is usually the most expensive

The 15% that sits on top of every listing

Selling a CS2 item on the Steam Market costs two fees, according to Valve's Community Market FAQ: Steam's 5% transaction fee and a 10% Counter-Strike 2 game fee, with a one-cent minimum. The detail most people miss is that Steam works both fees out from what the seller receives and adds them on top. So if a buyer pays $100, the seller gets about $86.96, not $85. The listing price you see already contains the fee, which pushes every Steam price up compared with a market that takes 2%.

Wallet money you can't cash out

Valve's Community Market FAQ is blunt about withdrawals: funds from market sales can't be withdrawn or moved to a bank or another account. That has a knock-on effect on prices. Sellers who want real money avoid Steam, so the supply there leans towards people who are happy to be paid in credit. Buyers with wallet balance from case drops or old sales, on the other hand, can only spend it on Steam, and they are willing to pay more for it. You end up with two economies quoting the same item.

The price ceiling

Valve's Community Market FAQ caps a wallet balance at $2,000 and a single listing at $1,800, or a similar amount in other currencies. For a Redline that is irrelevant. For knives and gloves near that line it is not. The cheapest Factory New Karambit | Doppler on Steam on 21 Oct 2026 was $1,457.83, with just three sales in the previous 24 hours, while Skinport's cheapest Ruby was $7,167.99. A knife worth much more than the cap simply can't be listed there, which is why the real price discovery for high-end items happens off Steam.

Buff163: where the floor price is set

Buff163, run by NetEase, is the giant of the Chinese market and probably the deepest pool of CS2 listings anywhere. Prices are set in Chinese yuan, which is why Buff often defines the "real" floor that Western sites react to. A Buff fee announcement posted on 14 April, which Chinese trading sites date to 2026, says the seller fee was cut from 2.5% to 1.5% across selling methods, with the 1% withdrawal fee unchanged. Check Buff's current terms before relying on it, but if it holds, that is about as cheap as selling gets.

The catch for most of our readers is access. Buff is built around the Chinese market, and in practice cashing out runs through Chinese payment services, which makes it awkward for players without them. Many Western traders use Buff prices as a reference point rather than a place to sell. When you see a Buff163 price quoted in dollars, remember it has been converted from yuan, so the exchange rate alone can widen or narrow the gap from one week to the next without anyone changing a listing.

CSFloat: low fees and float-first buyers

According to CSFloat's own blog and recent reviews, CSFloat charges sellers 2% and buyers nothing. Withdrawals reportedly cost a further 0.5% to 2.5% depending on how much you have sold in total, with new sellers at the top of that range. Check CSFloat's current fee page before you sell. Payouts go through Stripe to a bank, card or USDC depending on your country, and outside dollars you can lose roughly another percent on conversion, according to several 2026 reviews of the site.

Low fees let CSFloat sellers price lower and still net more than they would elsewhere, which is why CSFloat often sits near the bottom of a price comparison, close to Buff163. Which of the two is cheaper changes skin by skin and with the yuan exchange rate, so check both on the day rather than trusting a rule of thumb. The other thing CSFloat is known for is float and pattern search, so its buyers pay real money for low floats and good seeds, and its "lowest price" is often for the worst copy of a skin.

Skinport: a higher fee, simple cash-out

Skinport's regular seller fee is 8%, falling to 6% on items over €1,000, with a 2% rate for private sales, according to its sales-fee FAQ (last updated 31 Aug 2025). That is four times CSFloat's cut, and Skinport prices tend to be competitive anyway, because it is easy to use and has a lot of stock: 531 Field-Tested Redlines were listed there on 21 Oct 2026.

What a seller actually keeps

Fees matter more to sellers than to buyers, so here is the same $100 sale on each market, using the fees each platform publishes as of 21 Oct 2026. These are the platform fees only. Card deposits, bank charges and currency conversion come on top and depend on where you live.

Read this table backwards and you have most of the price gap. A seller on CSFloat can list $10 under Steam and still walk away with more, in money they can spend anywhere. Competition between sellers then drags third-party prices down towards that point.

Liquidity: thin markets have wide spreads

A price comparison only means something if there are enough listings behind it. A Field-Tested Redline traded 64 times on Steam in the 24 hours before our check, and Skinport had 531 of them listed. With that much supply, prices across markets stay within a predictable band, set mostly by fees and the wallet discount.

Now take the Shadow Daggers | Safari Mesh in Field-Tested. Steam recorded three sales in 24 hours; Skinport had four listed. With so few copies around, one seller's mood sets the price, and on 21 Oct 2026 the Steam listing was actually cheaper than Skinport's. Cheap knives in unpopular finishes are where you most often find a market that breaks the usual pattern, in either direction. If you are buying one, check every market rather than assuming Steam is the expensive one.

Float, phase and pattern: when "lowest price" compares different items

The lowest price on a market is the price of its worst listing. Two "Field-Tested" Asiimovs can be a 0.18 with a clean scope and a 0.37 with a scope that is almost black, and only one of them is at the floor. Markets with float and pattern search, like CSFloat, show the good copies at premium prices; a quick look at the floor on another market can make them look overpriced when they're not.

Doppler knives are the extreme case. Steam lists every Karambit | Doppler in Factory New under one name, so its single lowest price, $1,457.83 on 21 Oct 2026, covers Phase 1 to 4, Ruby and Sapphire together. Skinport splits them by phase, and the spread is enormous.

On 21 Oct 2026 the cheapest Factory New Karambit | Doppler of any phase on Skinport was a Phase 3 at $1,136.27, just under Phase 1 at $1,157.86 and Phase 4 at $1,179.27, a Phase 2 was $1,644.13, and the cheapest Ruby was $7,167.99. A "cheap Doppler on Steam" might be a Phase 3 priced like a Phase 2, so always check the phase before you compare prices.

Trade Protection adds a week of risk

Since 15 July 2025, every CS2 item received in a trade is Trade Protected for 7 days, and within that window the trade can be reversed. For a marketplace that means a sale isn't truly final for a week. Review sites that quote CSFloat's FAQ say it credits sellers about 8 days after the trade, once the protection has run out, and many other markets settle on a similar schedule. Sellers who want to be paid now accept a lower price somewhere faster, and that waiting cost is quietly priced into third-party listings.

On Steam's own market none of this changes the price much, because the sale is settled inside Steam and the money stays in your wallet anyway.

How to compare CS2 skin prices properly

Put the pieces together and a fair CS2 skin price comparison comes down to a few habits.

• Compare like with like: the same wear, and for Dopplers and pattern skins the same phase or pattern tier. Check float before you call a listing cheap.
• Decide what kind of money you are spending. Wallet funds from old drops are worth less than cash, so buying on Steam can make sense if that's all you have.
• When selling, compare what you keep after fees and withdrawal, not the listing price.
• On thin items, look at every market. The usual Steam premium can vanish or reverse.
• Remember currency. Buff163 prices are yuan converted into dollars or euros, so the gap moves with the exchange rate.

FAQ