In this review, we will let you know if BuffMarket is a legit platform and if you should use it, by analyzing its popularity, liquidity, variability of skins, fees, payment methods, and pros and cons.
History
After the massive success of BUFF163 in China, the owner company, NetEase, decided to expand its operations globally on April 1st 2021 by launching BuffMarket, a skins trading platform for CS:GO, Badlanders and Knivesout. Enabling users from around the world to trade skins and in-game items on their platform using the same system as BUFF163, which is P2P trading.
NetEase has already made BUFF163 the largest CS:GO trading site in the world, with a total of 4M offers listed, which are worth over $200M USD. They’re trying to replicate the success of this platform on BUFF163, and they’re doing it by offering a marketplace with a high variability of skins and items, optimal liquidity for fast trades, solid pricing, and a low selling fee.
On January 1, 2023, BuffMarket decided to launch a new promotion to boost its growth: it reduced the selling fee from 4.50% to 2.50% for all skins and items. Thanks to this tactic, BuffMarket surpassed the mark of 500K visitors, making it one of the top P2P skins trading platforms as of 2023.
Popularity
Seasoned CS:GO traders already know the beast that BUFF163 is, so it’s fair to ask: how is BuffMarket performing in comparison to its parent trading site? Here you have the stats:
- Monthly Visitors: 590,000+
- TrustPilot Rating: 4.7/5.0
- TrustPilot Reviews: 380+
- Twitter Followers: 7,900+
- Instagram Followers:
- YouTube Subscribers:
- Reddit Threads: 1,700+
- Steam Community Threads: 600+
- HLTV Threads: 700+
In a little over 2 years, BuffMarket has managed to grow exponentially, reaching new markets such as the USA and Europe. Thanks to its solid pricing, great variability of items and ease of P2P trading, it’s winning territory and getting closer to being another successful product by NetEase.
A Promising Platform Already Beating the Rest of the Market
There’s still a long way to go for BuffMarket, because when compared to BUFF163, here’s what we have:
| BuffMarket | BUFF163 | |
| Monthly Visitors | 590,000+ | 5,000,000+ |
| Listed Offers | 115, 000+ | 4,000,000+ |
| Total Marketplace Value | $5,400,000 | $211,000,000 |
| Ratio of Number of Listed Offers to Marketplace Value | 46.95 | 52.75 |
BuffMarket still has 3 more years to meet and potentially surpass the achievements of BUFF163, and at their current rate, we are sure that they will grow even more and bring traders an even better P2P trading experience (potentially with lower fees!).
The Marketplace Value to Number of Listed Offers Ratio lets us see that BuffMarket is on the right path because it has plenty of highly valuable offers despite being a novel trading platform. There’s a lot of money being traded at BuffMarket, and it’s because traders already trust it.
If we compare BuffMarket to other P2P platforms such as ShadowPay, Gamerpay and WAXPEER, you’re going to see that it’s growing at a faster rate:
| BuffMarket | ShadowPay | GamerPay | WaxPeer | |
| Year Established | 2021 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Monthly Traffic | 590,000 | 119,000 | 450,000 | 170,000 |
| Number of Listed Offers | 115, 000 | 248,000 | 37,000 | 139,000 |
| Total Value of Marketplace | $5,400,000 | $3,300,000 | $2,400,000 | $1,400,000 |
| Ratio of Number of Listed Offers to Marketplace Value | 46.95 | 13.30 | 64.86 | 10.07 |
As you can see, it’s already beating the majority of P2P skins trading marketplace, and it’s largely due to its low fees, high variability of items and skins, and optimal liquidity and systems that guarantee smooth trades.
Market Type
BuffMarket is a P2P (peer-to-peer) trading site that allows users to trade CS:GO, Badlanders and Knivesout skins and items directly from their Steam inventories. This brings you the freedom of listing your skins and cosmetics on different marketplaces, and you can also keep using them on the games until you sell them.
The downside of P2P trading is that you need to approve all transactions manually, but BuffMarket has made it easier by developing a fast and easy-to-use mobile app that makes it practical to handle and approve trades on the go.
BuffMarket has created a prosperous market for P2P traders because its prices are similar to Steam, and here we have the evidence:
| Skins | Steam | BuffMarket | ShadowPay | GamerPay | WaxPeer |
| Butterfly Knife | Marble Fade Factory New | $2,500 | $2,245 | $2,520 | $2,322 | $2,413 |
| AK-47 The Empress Minimal Wear | $49.21 | $43.00 | $42.00 | $32.00 | NA |
| AWP Hyper Beast Field Tested | $38.68 | $30.00 | $33.90 | $27.90 | $32.39 |
| Desert Eagle | Printstream Minimal Wear | $73.95 | $59.90 | $64.55 | $56.23 | NA |
| USP-S Kill Confirmed Minimal Wear | $92.95 | $79.98 | $84.99 | $64.64 | $85.11 |
It competes closely with other P2P trading platforms, bringing both buyers and sellers exclusive opportunities if they explore their marketplace with over 115K listed offers. It also stands out that BuffMarket has the most demanded skins in stock, whereas other marketplaces have less than 10 offers available or they’re out of stock.
Buying & Selling Fees
There’s no buying fee at BuffMarket, and until December 31, 2023, they have reduced the selling fee from 4.50% to 2.50% for all skins and items on the platform. Be it that you sell a skin worth $2 or one worth $1,000+, BuffMarket will charge the same fee until December 31, allowing you to save plenty of money in each trade.
However, we don’t like the fact that BuffMarket charges fees on withdrawals, because this will reduce your profits. We will cover this in the following section.
Deposit & Payout Methods
Here you have all the deposit and payout methods available on BuffMarket:
| Payment Methods | Deposit | Payout |
| Steam Skins | Yes | Yes |
| Bank Transfer | Yes | Yes |
| Visa | Yes | No |
| MasterCard | Yes | No |
| AmericanExpress | Yes | No |
| Payoneer | No | Yes |
Keep in mind that deposits and payouts via bank transfers can take up to 5 business days to be credited. Therefore, we recommend you to stick to Payoneer and credit/debit cards.
Note: BuffMarket charges a withdrawal fee when using Payoner, which is 1.00% + $1.00. For bank transfers, it will vary depending on your country but it uses the following formula: 1% + $2-$8 + additional bank fee.
Pros:
- Attractive prices for buyers
- Save money with a selling fee as low as 2.50%
- Outstanding skins and items variability
- Make easier and faster trades with the mobile app
- Inspect skins and items easily thanks to the Screenshot tool
Cons:
- You can only buy with credit or debit cards
- Poor customer support service
Verdict: Should You Trade at BuffMarket?
Yes, BuffMarket is one of our favorite P2P skins trading sites for CS:GO because you can save money thanks to the 2.50% selling fee, you’ll have users ready to trade 24/7 thanks to its outstanding liquidity, and its market is full of offers ranging from the cheapest and most common to the rarest and most expensive skins.