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It is hard to imagine how the iGaming industry would look today without the birth of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive back in 2012.
This unique creation of Valve Corp. not only changed how the public perceived FPS shooting games but drastically changed the perception of the value of in-game items.
In 2013, Valve Corp. introduced the “Arms Deal” Update and players had access to CS:GO skins for the first time. Initially, the impact was significant, but what followed was an overwhelming reaction that created a new market for gamblers, traders, and e even investors.
Shortly after, CS:GO skins became assets comparable to cryptocurrencies. Depending on how rare an item is, the price paid by collectors may go up to thousands of dollars.
The ever-growing demand for efficient buy-and-sell solutions resulted in the rise of different marketplaces focused exclusively on skins from CS:GO and other games. These websites allow you to buy or sell items through real cash transactions.
Read on to find a full guide on CS:GO Marketplaces in 2022.
What is a CSGO Marketplace?
Simply put, CS:GO Marketplaces work pretty much like standard online marketplaces but are solely focused on skins as the main products. A skin marketplace is an e-commerce site that serves as a point of connection between users willing to buy or sell skins or other in-game items.
All transactions are managed by the platform, which means users just need to connect to the website, look for the type of deal they are interested in, and complete the transaction with total safety.
CS:GO Marketplaces allow buyers to expose skins they want to sell to potential customers willing to buy them. The CS:GO Marketplace is responsible for reaching out to customers and exposing them to skins they would desire to buy, such as Amazon or eBay.
As expected, these websites involve constant transfers of money and skins between different parties, which requires solid security tools in place to guarantee no exposition to hazards.
How Does a CSGO Marketplace Work?
The premise of a CS:GO Marketplace is not hard to understand – it is a website that connects buyers and sellers interested in skin transactions. Users can opt for trading skins as well, but most transactions involved real money in the form of:
- Credit cards
- Bank transfers
- E-Wallets
- Cryptocurrencies
The steps involved in this process are similar to those required in other marketplaces:
- Visit the chosen CS:GO Marketplace and sign up using your Steam account
- If applicable, register using a valid email and a password
- For sellers, you need to set up your Steam account for trading
- Choose one of the payment methods available
- Expose the skins you want to sell or explore the website to find skins you are willing to buy
From that point on, the process is slightly different for buyers and sellers. After selecting skins from your inventory, sellers must wait until prospective buyers find their offers.
Most CS:GO Marketplaces have automated bots to connect buyers and sellers, which facilitates transactions and guarantees expedited processing. Depending on the circumstances, some skins might take more time to sell than others.
Once a buyer finds a seller willing to make business, the CS:GO Marketplace will connect the two parties and open a transaction order. The buyer will receive the chosen skins and the seller will be credited with the funds paid by the other party – it could not be simpler.
Why Not Stick with the Steam Marketplace to Buy and Sell CSGO Skins?
Steam has an official CS:GO Marketplace where users can trade skins. As long as your account has no restrictions to trading, you exchange skins for Steam Wallet cash or other items.
The cash on your Steam Wallet can be used to purchase other skins directly from Steam or pay for subscriptions or access to games. Still, most CS:GO skin owners prefer to rely on third-party marketplaces to find better deals.
Why? Mostly because the Steam Marketplace is simply too limited for most users. Conversely, third-party CS:GO Marketplaces offer a huge variety of skins, different payment methods for deposits and withdrawals, and bonuses and rewards on certain occasions.
When compared to the Steam Marketplace, the biggest advantage of third-party CS:GO Marketplaces is the possibility to engage in rapid transactions paid in real money. and seamless withdrawals.
Top Ranked CSGO Marketplaces in 2022
Choosing a favorite between the hundreds of CS:GO Marketplaces available in 2022 would simply be a herculean task, as you would have to test them all to decide which one suits your need best.
To ensure our readers do not have to go through this inconvenient task, we took the responsibility on our shoulders and went through a deep review process to identify the best options in terms of security, price, and efficiency.
Here’s our list of reliable CS:GO Marketplaces
Swap.GG
A Netherlands-based CS:GO Marketplace, Swap.GG is a fan favorite in the CS:GO community. Since 2017, over 8 million trades have been successfully closed on the website for more than one million users.
From the first visit, you will quickly notice that the website’s goal is to simplify the process to buy and sell CS:GO skins. After visiting market.swap.gg/csgo, you will find an extensive list of items for sale.
Within a few seconds, you can find the items you want to purchase using the filters available on the left side of the screen. Even though Swap.GG is mostly focused on CS:GO, you can also buy and sell items from Rust and Team Fortress.
To survive amid an overwhelmingly competitive segment, Swap.GG treats customers like kings and queens. From the very first day, you can get a cool 10% bonus each time you add credits to your balance.
Another important aspect is the site’s favorable commission policy. According to the website’s Terms & Conditions, they “shall charge for its brokerage services a User that is selling items 5% (five percent) of each selling price per transaction.”
The payment methods available include more than 200 options, such as Visa/Mastercard, UnionPay, iDeal, Alipay, and several others.
A unique feature available on Swap.GG is the possibility to “reserve” items for a later purchase. For example, you can use this feature with items that are currently locked for trade and unavailable.
Once the item becomes available, the website will notify you, and you will seamlessly withdraw it to your inventory. Sounds ideal, right?
LootBear
Have you ever thought about the possibility to rent CS:GO skins, playing with them, and later returning the item without necessarily compromising to purchase it? LootBear took this idea to another level and now offers a rental service for skins.
In terms of uniqueness, LootBear beats all competitors in the segment. The website offers a full CS:GO Marketplace where you can buy or sell skins at fair pricing rates. Currently, they offer one of the best spots for users interested in purchasing new skins.
The deposit methods available include Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and a list of cryptocurrencies that includes:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Litecoin (LTC)
The only method available for cash withdrawals is PayPal. If you want to rent your skins for profit, LootBear offers an AI-based risk evaluation system that allows you to assess the risk level of a proposal in real time.
This unique system goes through extensive data spread across hundreds of thousands of websites to predict whether a user is likely to default payments or engage in fraud.
Users interested in renting CS:GO skins must subscribe and go through a validation process. Once they have their identities confirmed, they can choose skins to rent from a catalog worth over $1.5 million.
The subscription plans for renters start at $15/month, allowing them to rent with up to $400 worth of skins for a month before returning the items to LootBear.
DMarket
Formed by a team of experienced iGaming professionals that includes the founder of Skins.Cash, DMarket is a world-class digital marketplace dedicated not only to CS:GO, but also to Rust 2, Team Fortress, Dota 2, NFTs, and Metaverse items.
The website has been publicly praised by publications like Reuters and Forbes, which shows how solid its reputation is. Additionally, SimilarWeb data shows that DMarket receives over 2 million visits every month.
At first glance, the website looks well-designed and sleek. The trading tools are readily available on the top of the screen, where users can decide whether they want to trade, buy, or sell CS:GO skins.
They offer a dedicated mobile app available on Google Play and Apple Store, so you can seize advantage of the best CS:GO skin deal on the go. In terms of pricing, the best word to describe DMarket is honest.
All skins have a decent pricing range, although some users might prefer websites with cheaper options. The fee rate varies between 1% to 7% for buyers and sellers, which is still much better than relying on the Steam Marketplace.
The website’s bot is amazingly efficient. Once you open an order to buy or sell a CS:GO skin, you will find a deal within a few seconds.
CSDeals
If you want a CS:GO Marketplace with the lowest commission fee, CSDeals offers the solution for your case. The website only requires a 2% fee from players, which allows you to save a lot of money when buying or selling skins.
Currently, CSDeals has more than 105,000 available in its catalog. Ranked among the world’s most respected CS:GO Marketplaces, the website allows you to buy, sell, or trade skins from:
- CS:GO
- Dota 2
- Rust
- Team Fortress 2
Not long ago, CSDeals introduced a new trade bot to their website. This much-welcomed addition allows users to complete a transaction at a much faster speed, saving precious time that could be used in other trades.
According to the unbiased review website Trustpilot, the general user opinion about CSDeals is overwhelmingly positive, which is clearly shown by its five-star rating and thousands of favorable comments.
When it comes to payment methods, CSDeals is as eclectic as it could get. Feel free to deposit funds using:
- Visa/Mastercard
- Skrill
- Bank transfers
- Sepa
- Zen
- WebMoney
- Trustly
If you are a fan of cryptocurrencies, you can either pay with Bitcoin (BTC) directly from your wallet or connect with Binance to choose a payment option from the thousands of crypto assets available there.
SkinsMonkey
This guide would not be complete if we did not talk about SkinsMonkey. With over 100,000 trades completed since its inception, this new platform was one of the best surprises of 2021.
While the website does not have a decade-long history, they have significantly impacted the CS:GO Marketplace segment with instant transactions and generous bonuses. Feel free to take a chance on SkinsMonkey to trade, buy, or sell items from:
- CS:GO
- Rust
- Dota 2
If you simply want to cash out from your inventory, they offer a convenient partnership with SkinCashier where you can get paid instantly for selected skins. For users looking for a closer approach, you can expose your skins and find buyers willing to pay the real price for them.
Buyers also have an advantage on SkinsMonkey, as the site allows them to bulk up their inventories by choosing from an extensive collection of all types of skins – low, medium, high, and collector-tier items.
Withdrawals are only available in the form of skins. The payment methods available for deposits include:
- Visa/Mastercard
- American Express
- JCB
- Klarna
- Neosurf
- Neteller
- Qiwi
- Skrill
- Union Pay
- Kinguin (Gift Cards)
If you prefer to pay or cash out with cryptocurrencies, the options available include Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), MakerDao (DAI), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC).
After registering on SkinsMonkey, you have the right to claim a whopping deposit of +35% and get skins for free with daily, weekly, and monthly giveaways. What else do you need to be happy, right?
Which Criteria Did We Use to Select the Best CSGO Marketplaces?
It is easy to find guides promising to walk you through the best CS:GO Marketplaces and instruct you on how to make the best of skin transactions. However, many websites only feature superficial reviews with no in-depth analysis of the key aspects involved in this process.
Rather than relying on information readily available on the search engines, our team went through detailed research to assess the elementary aspects of tens of CS:GO Marketplaces and determine which sites offer the best experience.
Here’s the set of criteria used for our analysis:
Security
It is impossible to close successful transactions without adequate security. If you have an environment with valuable assets like CS:GO skins, real cash, and cryptocurrencies, it will certainly attract malicious attention.
Our team assessed tens of CS:GO Marketplaces to identify which platforms offer the best security tools against hacks and fraud. Our security experts looked at each site’s connection and infrastructure to identify the existence of loopholes that could potentially be explored by external threats.
If a CS:GO Marketplace is listed here, you can rest assured that it offers full protection to personal data, financial storage, P2P connections, and other factors.
User Experience
It is almost impossible to stick with a CS:GO Marketplace that does not work properly. Our team looked at several websites to identify the existence of bugs and lags affecting the user experience, as well as the quality of the design and navigation.
Another important aspect considered in our assessment is how complex the transaction steps are and how intuitive navigation tools are.
Variety and Quality of Items
No CS:GO Marketplace can be considered a good option if there is a clear lack of items for buyers or sellers. The more options of skins available, the better a CS:GO Marketplace is – that’s our rule of thumb.
In this part of our assessment, we considered the number of skins available on each CS:GO Marketplace, the variety of skins, the ease to find medium to high-tier skins for fair prices, and how responsive the item search tools are.
Payment Methods Available
Our guide is exclusively focused on CS:GO Marketplaces that offer numerous payment options for deposits and withdrawals. A good variety of payment methods is essential to allow players to choose the most convenient solution for their personal circumstances.
Efficiency in Deposits & Withdrawals
Once buying or selling a CS:GO skin takes too long or the steps involved get too complex, users will simply run off and no longer rely on a trading website.
It is simply senseless to wait days to complete a simple transaction with CS:GO skins or wait until the funds paid for an item are credited to one’s account. If a CS:GO Marketplace fails to deliver a seamless experience on deposits and withdrawals, it cannot be ranked among the best sites in the segment.
Customer Support
The quality of a website’s customer support speaks a lot about how it treats users. When a CS:GO Marketplace fails to provide responsive customer support, the message is the site does not care about its customers’ needs.
Good customer support can easily turn a potential customer into a loyal user for the years to come. Here are the aspects we considered in our analysis:
- The number of customer support tools available
- The quality of the customer support
- The ease to report an existing issue
- How responsive the customer support personnel is
- How well-written the FAQ section is
- The website’s level of problem-solving skills
Reputation
It is impossible to trust a CS:GO Marketplace with a badly damaged reputation. Our list of recommended sites consists only of platforms that managed to perform consistently throughout the years and establish a solid reputation amid the CS:GO community.
In this sense, we looked at thousands of unbiased reviews from websites like Trustpilot, threads from Reddit, discussions on Discord, and an extensive list of comments on social media to assess each website’s reputation.
Mobile Functionality
As of late 2022, the world has gone mobile. You will not find a user who feels comfortable having to wait until he can get home to browse a website and get his CS:GO skins sold or purchased.
We tested several CS:GO Marketplaces to identify which sites offer a mobile-friendly experience, whether you are accessing it through a smartphone or tablet. The more seamless the mobile navigation is, the better the marketplace is rated in this aspect.
F.A.Q About CSGO Marketplaces
If you have made it so far, congratulations! Now you can use our recommendations to make the best out of your CS:GO skins and avoid costly mistakes on CS:GO Marketplaces.
The purpose of this guide is to protect our readers and ensure they are utterly safe from scammers, which means all the websites ranked on our list are 100% safe. If you need additional information, make sure to contact us and we’ll reach out to you.
In this section, we answered the most frequent questions about the CS:GO Marketplaces feature in this guide.
What is the Best CSGO Marketplace in 2022?
Our proposal is not to define the world’s best CS:GO Marketplace. Instead, our guide is the product of in-depth research to identify the most reliable CS:GO Marketplaces available in 2022.
Check each of the options featured on our selected list, give it a quick test, and decide which one suits your needs best.
Is it Safe to Buy and Sell Skins on CSGO Marketplaces?
Yes, you can buy and sell skins on CS:GO Marketplaces with full safety. As long as you stick to the websites recommended in this guide, you will not get scammed or suffer any similar damages.
Our selection of CS:GO Marketplaces only includes sites with an established reputation and solid security tools to protect users.
Are CSGO Marketplaces Legal?
Yes, it is perfectly legal to buy and sell skins using CS:GO Marketplaces. Skins are in-game items that eventually became valuable assets due to their popularity, but they are not regulated like cryptocurrencies.
There are no legal restrictions on CS:GO Marketplaces, so you can freely buy or sell these items regardless of your location.
