Are knife trade ups worth it in CS2? (live stats)

By Ivan B. · Updated 2026-10-31

Every knife trade up in CS2 checked against live prices every 3 hours: how many actually make money, what the cheapest one costs and which contracts come closest to breaking even.

Short answer: rarely. Right now 1 of 204 knife trade ups have a positive expected value at marketplace prices, and the median contract loses 31.4% of what you put in. The cheapest one costs $105.75 (5× AWP | Chrome Cannon BS) and is worth $63.78 on average; the closest to break even is 5× AWP | Printstream BS at +6.5%. (2026-11-01)

How a knife trade up works

Since the CS2 update of October 22, 2025, five Covert (red) skins from weapon-case collections can be traded up into one knife or pair of gloves. The result comes from the case pool of one of the inputs: every input adds a 20% share for its case, and inside a case every knife and glove has the same chance. All five inputs must be normal or all StatTrak™. The knife trade up calculator shows every possible result of a contract with its odds, float and price.

Why almost none of them make money

Reds from cases with a knife pool are bought for trade ups, so their price climbs until a contract is worth less than it costs. The table above prices the inputs and the results at the same lowest listing, with every input at the worst float of its wear; when this page was written (October 2026) the median contract still lost about a third of what went in. Selling the knife costs a fee on top, and the lowest listing is usually more than you get when you sell, so real results tend to be a little worse.

Be careful with “profitable” StatTrak™ contracts

A few StatTrak™ knife contracts look profitable on paper. Some of them rest on a single listing: one StatTrak™ knife finish listed at several times the price of the rest of the pool, which says little about what it would really sell for. Others hold up without their most expensive result, but StatTrak™ knife markets are thin, so check how many copies of the valuable results are listed before you trust the expected value.

When a knife trade up can still make sense

• You want any knife from that pool and are happy with a random finish, for less than the knives in the pool usually cost to buy.
• You can find low-float reds for close to the cheapest listing price: the stats above show how many contracts would turn positive with the lowest floats of their wear. Glove pools are the sharpest case: gloves start at a 0.06 float, so MW gloves need an average input float under about 0.12.
• You treat it as a gamble with a known expected loss, like opening a case, not as an investment.