CSFloat vs Steam Market: Why Rare Pattern Prices Don't Match
Steam Market prices a CS2 skin by name and wear only, so a Blue Gem and an ordinary copy share one price. CSFloat records the pattern index on every sale and pays out in cash. Why this site uses CSFloat sales, and where that data falls short.
Steam Community Market prices a skin by its name and wear, and nothing else, so a Tier 1 Blue Gem and the most ordinary AK-47 Case Hardened in Field-Tested end up on the same price chart. CSFloat records the pattern index on every sale and pays out in real money, which is why every price on this site comes from completed CSFloat sales.
That's the short answer. The longer one is about three separate gaps between the two markets, and only one of them has anything to do with patterns.
Gap one: Steam doesn't know the seed
Every Steam Market item is filed under a name like AK-47 | Case Hardened (Field-Tested). That string is all the price history knows. The paint seed, the float and the stickers are on the item, but the market's chart never looks at them.
For most skins that's fine. For Case Hardened it's close to useless. Seven of the 1,001 possible AK-47 seeds are tracked here as Tier 1 Blue Gems. The other 994 are the copies that make up nearly every Steam sale, so the Steam median describes an ordinary seed. It says nothing about a Blue Gem, in either direction.
Gap two: Steam money isn't cash
Steam keeps roughly 15% of each Market sale (a Steam fee plus a Counter-Strike fee), and the rest lands in your Steam wallet. It can't be withdrawn.
So sellers price up to cover the fee, and buyers accept it because wallet money has nowhere better to go. The result is that the same skin usually costs more on Steam than on a cash marketplace. Anyone comparing a Steam number with a CSFloat number is comparing two currencies.
Gap three: Steam has a ceiling
Your Steam wallet can't hold more than $2,000. An item that would sell for more than that can't sell on the Market at all.
Top-tier patterns clear that line easily. The highest recorded sale in the AK-47 Tier 1 group, pattern #670 at $26,750, carried four Katowice 2014 stickers. The same seed also sold sticker-free for $4,200. Both prices are out of Steam's reach.
Side by side
| Steam Community Market | CSFloat | |
|---|---|---|
| Records the paint seed | No | Yes, on every listing and sale |
| Records float and stickers | No (only the wear name) | Yes |
| Search by pattern index | No | Yes |
| Seller fee | About 15% | 2% at the time of writing |
| Money can be withdrawn | No, Steam wallet only | Yes |
| Price ceiling | $2,000 wallet cap | No wallet cap |
Fees change, so check CSFloat's current terms before you list anything.
Where CSFloat data falls short
I use CSFloat sales because they're the best public record of what a specific seed sold for. They aren't the whole market, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
The biggest pattern trades often happen off-platform, through Discord deals, middlemen or other sites, and none of those show up here. Top tiers are thin too: a Tier 1 seed can go months without a public sale, and one sale can drag a group average a long way. And a lot of rare-pattern sales carry stickers, which can inflate a price far past what the seed alone is worth. How stickers affect skin prices shows how to read around that.
So treat a CSFloat price as a verified data point with a date on it. Don't treat it as a quote.
Which one to use
If you own a Case Hardened, Heat Treated, Fade or Aphrodite skin with a seed in one of the tracked groups, ignore the Steam price. It's pricing a different item. Look up your seed from the weapons directory and read that pattern's own sale history.
For everything else, Steam is a fine reference, as long as you knock off the wallet premium in your head.
How it works has the full note on where the data comes from, and how to check the pattern index of a CS2 skin covers finding your seed in the first place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the Steam Market price different from CSFloat for the same skin?
Steam money can't be withdrawn and Steam takes about 15% of every sale, so a Steam dollar is worth less than a cash dollar and prices there usually sit higher. For pattern skins there's a second gap: Steam doesn't record the seed, so its price is an average of ordinary and rare copies.
Does the Steam Market show the pattern index?
No. A Steam listing shows the skin name and wear. The seed is only visible by running the listing's inspect link through a checker or using a browser extension.
Can you sell a Blue Gem on the Steam Market?
Only if it's worth less than Steam's price ceiling. The Steam wallet is capped at $2,000, so anything above that can't sell there, which rules out most top-tier Blue Gems.
Why does this site use CSFloat prices?
CSFloat records the paint seed, float and stickers on every sale, and sales are in money that can be cashed out. That makes it possible to price a specific pattern index instead of a skin-and-wear average.
Does CSFloat data capture every rare pattern sale?
No. The biggest trades often happen privately through Discord, middlemen or other marketplaces. CSFloat sales are a public, verifiable subset, not the whole market.