Steam Community Market for CS2

What is the Steam Community Market for CS2?

The Steam Community Market is the marketplace built into Steam. You list a CS2 skin, case, sticker or other marketable item from your inventory, and another player buys it with money from their Steam Wallet. The glossary entry has the short definition.

Two rules shape everything else. First, every sale and purchase runs through the Steam Wallet, and Valve's Community Market FAQ says those funds "cannot be withdrawn or transferred" to another account, a bank or any third party. Second, all purchases are final. There is no refund or reversal once a Market transaction completes.

So the Market is a place to turn skins into Steam credit, or Steam credit into skins. It is not a way to get cash. If cash is the goal, our guide on how to sell CS2 skins for real money covers the other routes.

How much does Steam take when you sell a CS2 skin?

Two fees are added on top of what the seller receives, and the buyer pays both inside the price they see:

• Steam Transaction Fee: 5%, with a minimum of $0.01. Valve says it may change in the future.
• Counter-Strike 2 Fee: 10%, a game fee set and collected by the publisher.

Together that is 15% of the seller's amount, or about 13% of the buyer's price. Here is what that looks like at real price points, worked out with the same cent-by-cent rule Steam's own fee code uses.

The $0.01 minimums are why very cheap items lose so much. On a Kilowatt Case listed at $0.16, you keep $0.14. Above about a dollar, the cut settles at 13% of the buyer's price. The Steam fee calculator converts any price in both directions.

Who can use the Steam Market?

Steam blocks new and recently changed accounts from the Market. The Community Market FAQ and the Trading and Market Restrictions page list the rules. The ones CS2 players hit most:

Valve says Steam Support cannot lift any of these, whatever the reason. The 3-day card wait can be avoided by verifying your card, which our guide to adding funds to your Steam Wallet walks through.

What limits does Steam put on prices and balances?

The Community Market FAQ sets three caps, all in US dollars or a similar amount in other currencies:

1. Wallet balance: $2,000. If your balance plus the sale price would pass $2,000, you cannot list the item. Balances on all your Steam accounts are added together for this rule.
2. Single listing: $1,800. No one item can be listed for more.
3. Buy orders: 10 times your balance. You can have open buy orders worth up to ten times what is in your wallet.

The $1,800 cap shuts the most valuable skins out of the Market. The highest Steam price in our snapshot was $2,046.39, which fits a cap on what the seller receives with the 15% in fees added on top. Of the 119 items whose cheapest cash listing was above $2,100, only 9 had any Steam listing at all (CSRated price snapshot, 2 October 2026). Expensive knives, gloves and rare skins trade almost entirely on third-party sites.

How do holds and trade protection affect Market items?

Three timers can touch an item you sell or buy on Steam.

• Market hold. If you have not had the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator for the last 7 days, Steam holds new listings for up to 15 days before buyers can see them, per the Trade and Market Holds FAQ. With the authenticator, there is no hold.
• Purchase lock. Items bought on the Market or in the game are not tradable or marketable until the date shown on the item in your inventory, says the restrictions page.
• Trade Protection. Every CS2 item you receive in a trade is Trade Protected for 7 days. You can use it in game but cannot sell it on the Market until the period ends.

Every listing also needs a confirmation in the Steam Mobile App or by email before it goes live, and there is no way to opt out. Our guides on the Steam trade hold and trade protection and reversals explain each timer in depth, and the trade hold calculator gives you the date an item frees up.

How do Steam Market prices compare with cash marketplaces?

Steam is almost always the most expensive place to buy, because buyers pay with wallet money they cannot take out. We compared the lowest Steam listing with the cheapest cash listing across Skinport, Market.CSGO, Waxpeer, Lis-Skins and White.market for every item with at least 20 Steam listings.

Source: CSRated price snapshot, 2 October 2026. Cash prices are from that day; Steam prices were collected over the previous 8 days.

Stickers are the exception. More than a third were cheaper on Steam than on any cash market we track, so the gap is not the same for every kind of item.

A popular skin shows the pattern. On the same snapshot, an AK-47 | Redline (Field-Tested) cost $35.89 on Steam. Its cheapest cash listing was $24.41 on Skinport, and the other four cash markets asked between $26.30 and $28.19. Buying it on Steam cost about $8 to $11 more.

Steam does have the most stock. It showed about 23.8 million listings across 35,568 items in our snapshot, far more than any single cash market. A Kilowatt Case alone had over 790,000 Steam listings.

Should you sell on the Steam Market or a third-party marketplace?

It depends on what you will do with the money. Take that same AK-47 | Redline (Field-Tested):

• Steam: list it at $35.89 and you receive $31.21 in Steam Wallet funds.
• Skinport: the Skinport review lists an 8% seller fee. Its 30-day median sale for this skin was $28.38, so a sale at that price leaves $26.11 in cash, paid out by bank transfer.

On paper, Steam pays $5 more. But a wallet dollar buys less: at the median 43% Steam premium for weapon skins, $31.21 of wallet money buys roughly what $21.80 buys on a cash market. So the choice is simple:

• Sell on Steam if you will spend the money on Steam anyway, such as a game or other items on the Market. You skip identity checks and payout waits.
• Sell on a third-party marketplace if you want money in a bank account, PayPal or a crypto wallet, or if the item is worth more than Steam's $1,800 cap.
• Compare first. Our marketplace fees page lists seller, buyer and withdrawal fees side by side, and the fee calculator shows what you keep on each site for a given price.

How do buy orders work on the Steam Market?

For items that are identical copies of each other, such as cases and most stickers, Steam lets you place a buy order instead of picking a listing. You set the most you will pay and how many you want. If nothing is listed at that price, the order waits.

Valve's FAQ explains the matching rules. When you place an order, the Market takes the cheapest listings and, among those, buys from the seller who has waited longest. When a new listing matches several open orders, the oldest order wins, a rule Valve adopted in 2017 to treat all currencies fairly. If your wallet cannot cover an order, Steam cancels it.

Buy orders help sellers too. The order book shows what people are willing to pay right now, so you can choose between a lower price that sells at once and a higher one that waits.

What are the most common Steam Market mistakes?

• Mixing up the two prices. When you list, Steam shows both what the buyer pays and what you receive. Set the one you mean, or check it in the fee calculator first.
• Hitting the $2,000 cap. A large wallet balance can block new listings. Spend some first or sell elsewhere.
• Funding with a new card right before a purchase. Unverified cards and PayPal add a 3-day wait.
• Falling for the "fund transfer" trick. Valve's Scam FAQ warns about people who offer to buy your cheap item at a high Market price to "send" you wallet funds. Most of these use fraudulent money.
• Buying for resale without checking the gap. With the median weapon skin 43% dearer on Steam, a skin bought on the Market and sold on a cash site usually loses money.
• Pricing from memory. Prices move daily. Paste your items into the inventory value checker or open the skin's page to see every market's current price before you list.