How We Rate
Four factors, the same four for every site, each scored out of five and averaged into the number on the card. The method is published so you can argue with a specific score instead of the whole page.
1. Trust and safety
Who owns the site, what licence it holds if any, and whether it has a payout record worth anything. Most CS2 sites are unlicensed — we write that plainly rather than burying it, then judge what is left: the transparency of the operator, its dispute history, how trades are protected, and whether the fairness system is real.
2. Fairness and value
What the games cost you. The published house edge or rake where there is one, whether a round can be recomputed afterwards, and what a bonus is worth after wagering, caps and expiry are subtracted. For marketplaces: commission, withdrawal fees and the distance between site price and market price.
3. Payouts
What can leave, what it costs, what has to happen first, and how long ours took. A site that only pays in skins scores below one that pays in skins, crypto and cash, and a gate — wagering, a tier, a minimum deposit — costs more than a fee does.
4. Support and experience
Channels, hours, languages, and an actual answer to an actual question. Build quality counts here too: a broken verifier, a dead trade bot or a support widget that never loads is a support failure.
What happens before a score is published
An account is created, a deposit is made, the modes are played, a round is verified and a withdrawal is taken and timed. Key facts — rake, limits, rails, KYC triggers, bonus terms — come from the operator's own pages, and the month of the last check is stamped on the listing.
When a score changes
Ratings are re-checked on a cycle and immediately when something material moves: a rake rise, a licence change, a new hold, a wave of unpaid withdrawals, a fairness page that stops working. The review says what changed rather than quietly editing the number. Sites that close stay in the archive, because a record of what happened is more useful than a blank space.
What does not affect a score
Commission. A site paying us nothing and a site paying us well are scored on the same four factors, and the ranking is score order. If that ever stops being true, this page will say so first.