CS2 Trade-Up Contract — The Complete Guide

A Trade-Up Contract lets you sacrifice 10 skins of the same rarity tier to receive one skin of the next-higher tier. Trade-Ups are a fundamental mechanic in CS — used for both cosmetic upgrades and profitable arbitrage when input skin prices are depressed and output skin prices are elevated.

How Trade-Ups work

1. Collect 10 skins of the same rarity tier (all Mil-Spec, or all Restricted, or all Classified). Skins can be from different cases/collections — but every input case/collection contributes one output candidate to the output pool.
2. Access the Trade-Up Contract UI in your inventory.
3. The contract calculates: (a) which output collection each input contributes to; (b) which output skin drops based on random selection weighted by collection contribution; (c) the output float value = average of the 10 input float values, scaled to the output skin's wear range.
4. Trade-Ups involving StatTrak inputs produce a StatTrak output. The counter is reset to 0.

Profitable Trade-Ups

Trade-Ups are profitable when input Mil-Spec / Restricted skins trade at a discount to their theoretical output value. Common profitable patterns: (1) low-float trade-ups targeting Factory New output with wide wear range; (2) trading up from an oversupplied collection into an undersupplied output; (3) collection-collision trade-ups where all 10 inputs are from one collection guaranteeing an output from that collection.

Use our Trade-Up Calculator to check EV and output float before committing skins.