CS2 Rarity Tiers and Case Odds: Official Drop Rates

CS2 weapon skins come in seven rarity grades, from Consumer Grade (white) up to Contraband (orange), with knives and gloves above them as rare special items. Weapon cases only contain Mil-Spec and better: the official odds are 79.923% Mil-Spec, 15.985% Restricted, 3.197% Classified, 0.639% Covert and 0.256% for a knife or gloves, and every eligible item has a one-in-ten chance of being StatTrak™.

The seven weapon skin rarities

Every weapon skin has exactly one rarity grade. You can see it as a color on the item’s tile in your inventory and in case previews, and in the color of its name on the Steam Community Market. The color codes below come from the game’s item files.

Which grade a design gets is Valve’s call. In a 2015 post for workshop artists, Valve explained that bright designs that fit a weapon’s shape tend to end up in the upper tiers, while subdued colors and more random patterns go lower. The AK-47 | Redline, for example, is Classified, and the AWP | Asiimov is Covert.

Contraband exists because of a single skin. In June 2014 Valve removed the M4A4 | Howl from the Huntsman Weapon Case after a copyright claim, replaced the artwork on copies players already owned and gave those copies the Contraband rarity. The Howl will never be produced again, and it is still the only weapon finish in that grade.

Official weapon case odds per tier

The official figures come from Perfect World, Valve’s publishing partner in China, which has listed them on csgo.com.cn since September 2017. Every key-opened weapon case uses the same table:

You will often see these rounded to 79.92%, 15.98%, 3.20%, 0.64% and 0.26%. They come from fixed ratios: from Covert down, each tier is five times as likely as the one above it, a rare special item is two-fifths as likely as a Covert, and every item within a tier has the same chance. The odds apply to each opening on its own, so opening 391 cases does not guarantee a knife or gloves.

These numbers only cover Valve’s containers. Cases on third-party sites, such as those in the CSDROP case list, are separate products with their own contents.

Knives and gloves: the rare special item

Above Covert, every weapon case has one more slot, shown in the preview as ★ Rare Special Item ★ and often called the gold tier by players. It holds the case’s knives or gloves: most cases carry a set of knives, such as the ★ Karambit, while the Glove Case and some later cases carry gloves instead. The items keep the ★ symbol and the red Covert color, and their type reads ★ Covert Knife or ★ Extraordinary Gloves.

At 0.256%, a knife or pair of gloves turns up in about one of every 391 openings. Since the update of October 22, 2025 there is a second route: a trade-up contract can turn five Covert skins into a knife or gloves from the collection of one of the inputs. The newest gloves arrived in March 2026 with the Dead Hand Collection, whose 22 gloves are bought through Dead Hand Terminals, and Perfect World lists those Terminals under the same odds table as key-opened cases.

The StatTrak™ chance

Any item that can come in a StatTrak™ version has a one-in-ten (10%) chance of doing so when it drops from a case. That covers the guns and the knives. Gloves have no StatTrak™ version at all. Put the two numbers together and a StatTrak™ knife comes out of roughly one in every 3,910 openings of a knife case.

StatTrak™ items follow their own rules in trade-ups as well. Ten StatTrak™ skins return a StatTrak™ result, StatTrak™ and normal skins can’t be mixed in one contract, and five StatTrak™ Coverts can only return a StatTrak™ knife, never gloves.

How collections without cases drop items

Many collections have no case at all: map collections such as The Dust 2 Collection, operation collections and newer drop collections. They are also the only source of Consumer and Industrial Grade skins. Their items reach players in several ways:

• Weekly care package. Your first level-up each week earns a care package in which you pick two of four offered items, drawn from weapon cases, skins from the current drop list and graffiti. Valve rotates that list: in January 2026 it added the Harlequin and Achroma collections and removed The Safehouse Collection, The Dust 2 Collection, The 2018 Nuke Collection and The 2018 Inferno Collection.
• The Armory. An Armory Pass earns credits as you gain XP, and you spend the credits on Armory items. It opened in October 2024 with The Graphic Design Collection, The Sport & Field Collection and The Overpass 2024 Collection. In July 2026 Sport & Field and Train 2025 made way for the new Spy Tech and Arabesque collections.
• Souvenir packages. Each Major souvenir package holds skins from one map collection, in Souvenir quality.
• Terminals. The Genesis Collection (September 2025) and the Dead Hand Collection (March 2026) are reached through Terminals that arrive as weekly drops.
• Trade-up contracts. The result always comes from the collection of one of the inputs, so you can reach a collection’s higher grades from its lower ones.

The published odds for these containers are also weighted heavily towards the lowest grade they hold:

FAQ

Do all CS2 weapon cases have the same odds?

Yes. Every key-opened weapon case uses the same five-tier table. What changes from case to case is which skins sit in each tier.

Can you unbox a Consumer or Industrial Grade skin?

Not from a weapon case. Those grades only exist in collections without a case, so they come from drops, souvenir packages and the other collection sources above.

What are the odds of unboxing a StatTrak™ knife?

About 0.026%, or roughly one in 3,910 openings of a case whose rare special items are knives: the 0.256% chance of a rare special item multiplied by the one-in-ten StatTrak™ chance.

What does the ★ in a name mean?

It marks the rare special items, knives and gloves, as in ★ Karambit | Fade or ★ Sport Gloves | Vice. No ordinary gun skin carries it, whatever its rarity.

Can you still get a Contraband skin?

Only by trading for an existing one. The M4A4 | Howl has not been produced since June 2014, so no case, drop or trade-up can create a new copy.