Platform Review P2P Marketplace
Steam Community Market
Valve's own marketplace, and the baseline every other site on this page is really competing with. It is the safest venue in CS2 by construction — no third party ever holds your items or your money — and the most expensive: 15% comes off every sale (a 5% Steam transaction fee plus the 10% Counter-Strike 2 fee), and the proceeds are Steam Wallet credit forever. Valve's Market FAQ answers "Can I withdraw or transfer funds from my Community Market sales?" with a flat "No". Wallet balances are capped at $2,000 and no single item may list above roughly $1,800.
Steam Community Market at a Glance
| Platform Type | P2P Marketplace |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 |
| Fees | 15% total — 5% Steam transaction fee + 10% Counter-Strike 2 fee |
| Cash-out | None — Valve states Market funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred |
| Payment Methods | Steam Wallet credit (no cash-out) |
| Official Site | steamcommunity.com |
What is Steam Community Market?
The Steam Community Market is not really a competitor to the platforms above it on this page — it is the thing they all exist because of. Valve runs it, Valve escrows it, and every price you see quoted anywhere in CS2 trading is ultimately anchored to what items change hands for here. It is also, by a wide margin, the most expensive place to sell a skin and the only one from which the money can never leave.
As a venue it is unimprovable on safety. There is no third party holding your items, no bot to trade with, no payout processor to clear KYC with, no account freeze to appeal. You list, someone buys, the credit appears. Nobody can exit-scam you because there is no counterparty other than Valve.
The catch is total and structural: what you receive is Steam Wallet credit, forever. Valve's own Community Market FAQ asks "Can I withdraw or transfer funds from my Community Market sales/transactions?" and answers, in full: "No. All Community Market sales and purchases are completed using the Steam Wallet. The funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred to another Steam account or to a bank/3rd party account." Every third-party marketplace on this page is, at bottom, a business built on that one sentence.
Steam Community Market fees explained
Steam takes 15% of every CS2 sale, assembled from two separate charges. The Steam Transaction Fee is "currently 5% (with a minimum fee of $0.01)", and on top of that sits the Counter-Strike 2 fee — described by Valve as "a game specific fee that is determined and collected by the game publisher" and "currently set at 10%". Valve's help page still labels that second one the CS:GO Fee, which tells you roughly how often it gets revisited.
There is a wrinkle in who nominally pays. Valve states that "the buyer pays the Steam Transaction Fee", and the fee is added on top of the amount the seller asked for rather than deducted from it. In practice that means the two figures on a listing differ: if a buyer pays $100, the seller receives about $86.96, not $85. Either way the 15% leaves the transaction, and either way it is the highest take rate on this page — nearly eight times CSFloat's 2%.
Two limits are worth knowing before you plan around Steam. Wallet balances are capped at $2,000, aggregated across every Steam account you own, and no single item may be listed above roughly $1,800. Above those thresholds the Community Market simply is not an option, which is a large part of why high-value knife and glove trading happens elsewhere.
Payments & cash-out on Steam Community Market
There isn't one. This is the entire point of the row, and the reason it sits at the bottom of the table rather than the top. Market proceeds are Steam Wallet credit, usable to buy games, in-game items, or Steam gifts for other users — and nothing else. They cannot be sent to a bank, converted to cash, or moved to another Steam account.
That makes selling on Steam a fundamentally different transaction from selling anywhere else on this page. On CSFloat or Skinport you are converting an item into money. On Steam you are converting an item into a different kind of item-buying power. If your intention is to fund more CS2 purchases, the 15% is simply the cost of the safest possible venue. If your intention is to be paid, Steam cannot do it at any price.
Access also has prerequisites: your account needs a successful purchase older than seven days but less than a year old, and Steam Guard enabled for fifteen days. And every sale is final — Valve is explicit that "all purchases are final – you will not have any right to a refund or a reversal of any Community Market transaction once it is completed."
Pros
- Zero counterparty risk — Valve is the escrow
- No KYC, no payout delays, no account freezes
- Instant, guaranteed settlement into your wallet
- The deepest buyer pool in CS2 by a wide margin
Cons
- 15% is the highest fee on this page
- Money can never leave Steam — Valve states funds "cannot be withdrawn or transferred"
- Wallet balance capped at $2,000; items above ~$1,800 cannot be listed at all
- All sales are final — no refunds or reversals
Who Steam Community Market is for
- Anyone whose goal is buying more games or skins, not being paid — the credit is worth full face value inside Steam
- Traders who will not accept any third-party custody of items or funds, at any fee
- Small, frequent sales where a third-party payout minimum would eat the proceeds anyway
- Anyone who wants a settlement that is instant, guaranteed and impossible to freeze
Who should skip it
- You want actual money — Valve states plainly that funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred
- You are selling anything valuable: items above roughly $1,800 cannot be listed at all
- You are fee-sensitive, since 15% is the highest rate on this page by a wide margin
- Your wallet is near the $2,000 cap, which blocks further listings outright
The Verdict
Steam is the baseline, not the recommendation, and it is included here because every comparison on this page is implicitly against it. On the two axes that matter — what a sale costs and whether you can be paid — it loses on both: 15% is the worst rate listed, and the cash-out is not slow or expensive but genuinely nonexistent.
What it wins on is risk, absolutely. No third-party marketplace can match zero counterparty exposure, and none ever will, because the risk is structural to their existing at all. So the decision is clean: if the value is staying inside Steam anyway, sell on Steam and stop reading. If you want money out, the 15% and the locked wallet are precisely the two problems every other platform on this page is selling you a solution to — and CSFloat at 2% with bank or USDC payouts, or Skinport at 8% with free bank transfers, are where that comparison starts.
Key Features
Payment Methods
Payment methods vary by region and account verification level. Check Steam Community Market's website for your location's available options.
Steam Community Market FAQ
- What is Steam's fee on CS2 skins?
- 15% total: a 5% Steam Transaction Fee with a $0.01 minimum, plus a 10% Counter-Strike 2 fee collected by the publisher. The fee is added on top of the seller's asking price, so a $100 buyer payment returns about $86.96 to the seller.
- Can I withdraw money from the Steam Community Market?
- No. Valve's Community Market FAQ states that funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred to another Steam account or to a bank or third-party account. Proceeds are Steam Wallet credit and can only be spent on Steam, including on gifts for other users.
- Is it better to sell on Steam or a third-party marketplace?
- If you want to buy more games or skins, Steam — the credit is worth full value there and the transaction carries no counterparty risk. If you want money, a third-party marketplace is the only option, and most charge far less than 15%: CSFloat is 2% and Skinport 8%.
- Why can't I list my expensive knife on Steam?
- The Community Market caps any single listing at approximately $1,800, and caps your total Steam Wallet balance at $2,000 across all your accounts. High-value items therefore have to be sold elsewhere.
- Is the Steam Market safe?
- It is the safest venue in CS2 by construction — Valve is both the marketplace and the escrow, so there is no third party who can fail, freeze your funds, or disappear. The trade-off is the 15% fee and the fact that proceeds can never leave Steam.
Similar Trading Sites
Other Trading Platforms
Related Resources
How we compare trading sites
- Fees are read from the operator, not estimated.Every fee in the table comes from the platform’s own pricing or terms page. Where a site prices by spread rather than a stated percentage, we say so instead of inventing a number.
- Trustpilot scores are dated. Each one carries the day it was read, because a score quoted without a date is a claim about a moving number.
- We publish cash-out reality, not just the fee. The headline percentage matters less than whether you can get actual money out, how long it takes, and whether KYC is required — which is where most complaints in this category come from.
- Shut-down platforms keep their page. We do not quietly delete a marketplace that failed. Those pages stay as a record of what happened, because that is the most useful thing anyone can know about them.
- We earn commission on some links. Where a platform runs an affiliate programme and we are in it, our outbound links are affiliate links. It costs you nothing extra, and it is why the fee data is sourced and the negatives are published.
Staying safe when you trade skins
Fees are the thing people compare and theft is the thing that actually costs them. Almost every inventory lost in CS2 trading goes the same handful of ways, and none of them involve the marketplace itself being hacked.
- Never give anyone your Steam API key. A stolen API key lets an attacker silently cancel your real trade offers and substitute their own, so you confirm a trade that no longer goes where you think. Check your API key page and revoke any key you did not create yourself. No legitimate marketplace needs it.
- Read the trade confirmation, not the website. The Steam mobile confirmation is the only screen that tells the truth about what you are sending and to whom. Check the items and the recipient there every time, however trustworthy the site looked.
- Support will never DM you first.Impersonated “support” accounts on Steam and Discord are the most common approach in this category. Real support happens on the site you logged into, never in an unsolicited message.
- Check the domain before you sign in. Phishing sites clone marketplaces exactly and differ only in the URL. Type it yourself or use a bookmark; never sign in from a link someone sent you.
- Valve will not help you afterwards. Trades are final, Steam Support does not reverse them or restore items lost to a scam, and third-party sites are outside its remit entirely. Prevention is the whole of the cure here.