CS2 Trade-Up Contracts: Rules, Odds and Float Formula

A CS2 trade-up contract takes 10 weapon skins of the same rarity and gives you one skin of the next rarity up, picked from the collections of the skins you put in. Since October 2025 you can also trade five Covert skins for a knife or a pair of gloves. The result is random, but the collections and floats you choose decide the odds and the wear of what comes out.

How a trade-up contract works

You start a contract from the Trade Up section of your inventory, or by selecting a skin and choosing Use With Trade Up Contract. The skins you select are used up, and you receive a single new item. The in-game description sums it up: in exchange for 10 items of identical quality, you get one item of a quality one higher, from a collection of one of the items you provided. The inputs don’t have to share a collection.

You put in	You get
10 Consumer Grade	1 Industrial Grade
10 Industrial Grade	1 Mil-Spec Grade
10 Mil-Spec Grade	1 Restricted
10 Restricted	1 Classified
10 Classified	1 Covert
5 Covert	1 knife or pair of gloves (★ Rare Special Item)

The contract has grown a lot since Valve launched it on September 12, 2013 as the Arms Deal Contract, which only took Arms Deal Collection items. Mixing collections has been allowed since May 2014, StatTrak skins since March 2015, Covert-to-knife trades since October 2025 and Souvenir skins since May 2026. The recent changes are listed in Valve’s update notes.

How the result is chosen

Each input carries the same weight. A collection’s chance equals its share of your inputs, and that chance is split evenly between the collection’s skins at the next rarity. Put in seven skins from one collection and three from another, and you have a 70% chance of a result from the first and 30% from the second.

Valve’s notes only promise that the result comes from a collection of one of the items provided. The per-input weighting above is what player testing and trade-up calculators have used since the October 2025 update. Before that, collections with more possible outcomes got a bigger share, which is why older guides give different odds.

What you can and can’t put in

• StatTrak: the inputs must be all StatTrak or all non-StatTrak. Ten StatTrak skins give a StatTrak result. The game runs StatTrak contracts as a separate recipe, so the two can’t be mixed.
• Souvenir: since May 2026, Souvenir skins can go in alongside normal skins of the same rarity. Their Souvenir attributes are removed, and the result is always a normal item one rarity higher.
• Knives, gloves and Contraband: knives and gloves are already the top of the ladder, and Contraband items such as the M4A4 | Howl have nothing to trade into.
• Top-rarity skins: a skin that is already the highest rarity in its own collection has nothing to trade into, so the contract won’t accept it.
• Non-weapon items: stickers, charms, agents, graffiti, music kits and containers can’t be used.

How the output float is calculated

The float, or wear value, of the result depends on the floats of your inputs, adjusted for each skin’s own float range. Valve doesn’t publish the formula, but since the October 2025 update, testing shows it works in three steps:

1. Turn each input’s float into its position within that skin’s range: (float − minimum) ÷ (maximum − minimum).
2. Average those positions across all the inputs.
3. Map the average onto the range of the skin you receive: minimum + average × (maximum − minimum).

Older guides average the raw floats instead, and that shortcut stopped matching the game in October 2025. Because every possible result has its own range, the same inputs can give a Factory New result from one outcome and a Minimal Wear result from another. The final float sets the wear:

Wear	Float range
Factory New	0.00–0.07
Minimal Wear	0.07–0.15
Field-Tested	0.15–0.38
Well-Worn	0.38–0.45
Battle-Scarred	0.45–1.00

Trading Covert skins for knives and gloves

Valve extended the contract to Covert skins in the October 22, 2025 update. The release notes set out the terms:

5 StatTrak™ Covert items can be exchanged for one StatTrak™ Knife from a collection of one of the items provided

5 regular Covert items can be exchanged for one regular Knife item or one regular Gloves item from a collection of one of the items provided

The possible results are the rare special items tied to each input’s collection. Five Covert skins from The Kilowatt Collection, for example, can only give a ★ Kukri Knife, the rare special item of the Kilowatt Case, and a StatTrak one if all five inputs are StatTrak.

Two limits follow from this. Covert skins from collections that have no knives or gloves, such as map collections, can’t be used. And because gloves never come in StatTrak, StatTrak Covert skins from glove-only collections can’t be traded up at all. As of September 2026 those are The Glove Collection and the Operation Hydra, Clutch, Operation Broken Fang, Snakebite, Recoil, Revolution and Dead Hand collections.

Worked example

Say you trade up 10 Classified skins: seven M4A1-S | Black Lotus from The Kilowatt Collection at 0.056 float each, and three UMP-45 | Wild Child from The Revolution Collection at 0.080 each. Each collection has two Covert skins.

Odds. Kilowatt supplies 7 of the 10 inputs, so it gets 70%, split into 35% for each of its two Coverts. Revolution gets 30%, or 15% for each of its two.

Float. Black Lotus has a float range of 0.00–0.70, so 0.056 sits 8% of the way in (0.056 ÷ 0.70 = 0.08). Wild Child runs from 0.00 to 1.00, so 0.080 is also 0.08. The average position is 0.08, which is then mapped onto each outcome’s range:

Possible result	Chance	Float range	Output float	Wear
AK-47 | Inheritance	35%	0.00–0.80	0.064	Factory New
AWP | Chrome Cannon	35%	0.00–1.00	0.080	Minimal Wear
M4A4 | Temukau	15%	0.00–0.80	0.064	Factory New
AK-47 | Head Shot	15%	0.00–1.00	0.080	Minimal Wear

That makes a Factory New result a 50% chance. With the old raw-average method, the same inputs would average 0.0632 and every outcome would have looked like Factory New, which is why it pays to plan with the current formula.

FAQ

Can you trade up knives or gloves?

No. Knives and gloves are the top of the ladder. The only way to get one from a contract is to trade five Covert skins from a collection that has rare special items.

How many Covert skins do you need for a knife?

Five. The Covert contract is the only one that takes fewer than 10 inputs, and it can give gloves instead of a knife if the collection has gloves.

Can you use Souvenir skins in a trade-up?

Yes, since May 2026. They can be mixed with normal skins of the same rarity, and the result is always a normal item.

Can you mix StatTrak and normal skins?

No. A contract is either all StatTrak, which gives a StatTrak result, or all non-StatTrak.

Does the float of my inputs matter?

Yes. The result’s float comes from where each input sits within its own float range, scaled to the range of the skin you receive, so low-float inputs give low-float results.