Steam Market value vs. cash value
· By the CSNetWorth team
The total CSNetWorth shows is a listed reference value: what the cheapest current Steam Market listings (or a median) suggest your CS2 items are priced at. It is not the amount of money you would end up with if you sold everything. The gap comes from where the money lands, fees, and whether buyers exist at that price.
Reference price vs. realizable proceeds
A lowest listing is an asking price from another seller. To sell quickly you usually have to match or undercut it, and after a sale the price you receive is lower than what the buyer pays because fees are added on top. The more items you list at once, the more you may need to undercut.
What Steam says about Market funds and fees
According to Steam Support's Community Market FAQ, Market sales and purchases are completed using the Steam Wallet, and those funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred to a bank, a third-party account or another Steam account. The same FAQ describes a Steam Transaction Fee and game-specific fees that are added to the price a buyer pays, and it notes that Steam applies limits on wallet balances and on the maximum price of a single listing. Fee rates and limits can change, so check the FAQ and the confirmation screen on Steam for the current figures.
In practice this means a Steam Market total is best read as "Steam Wallet credit, before selling costs", not as cash.
Liquidity: can it actually sell?
- Popular cases and common skins usually have many listings and frequent sales.
- Rare or expensive items may have few buyers, so the lowest listing can sit unsold for a long time.
- A low-volume item's lowest listing can be far from what someone will pay today. The volume figure on CSNetWorth item pages helps you judge this.
Premiums CSNetWorth does not price
Steam Market prices are per item name, for example a skin in a given wear. Two copies with the same name are priced identically here, even though traders may pay more for:
- a particularly low float value within the wear range,
- rare pattern seeds on certain finishes,
- applied stickers, especially older or rare ones,
- name tags or other modifications.
These premiums vary item by item and we do not estimate them, so a specific item can be worth more (or less) than the reference price shown.
Third-party marketplaces
Other trading sites have their own prices, fees and payout methods, so their numbers can differ from Steam Market prices in either direction. CSNetWorth only uses cached Steam Market reference prices and does not compare marketplaces. See the methodology for exactly what is included.