What is float value in CS2?

Float value is a 0.00–1.00 decimal Valve assigns to every skin instance at the moment it drops. Lower float = visually cleaner skin. The float determines the wear bucket (Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, Battle-Scarred) and visual appearance.

What are the CS2 wear bucket boundaries?

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. The boundaries are hard — a 0.069 is FN, a 0.071 is MW, even though they look identical.

Is a lower float always better?

Not always. Most skins look cleanest at lower floats and command higher prices. But some skins have float-specific visual quirks — for example, the M4A1-S Hyper Beast or AK-47 Wasteland Rebel actually look better at moderate-Battle-Scarred floats because the wear effect creates artistic depth. Always check the visual at the specific float bucket before assuming "lower = better".

How do I check the exact float of a CS2 skin?

Paste the Steam inspect link into a CS2 inspect tool. Modern inspect links self-encode the full float value via protobuf — no API call needed for newer items. Older pointer-form links require an API resolver (CSFloat is the common one).

What is the float cap and how does it affect skins?

Every CS2 skin has a min/max float range Valve defined at creation. Most skins span 0.00-1.00 but many are capped — e.g. AK-47 Case Hardened is 0.00-0.75, AWP Asiimov is 0.18-0.45 (so no Factory New copies exist). The cap determines which wear buckets are possible for that skin.

CS2 Skin Float and Wear, Explained

Every CS2 skin carries an invisible number called its float value — a decimal between 0.00 and 1.00 that determines how worn the skin looks and which wear bucket (Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, Battle-Scarred) it falls into. Two AK Asiimovs at floats 0.06 and 0.07 look almost identical but trade at very different prices — because one is Factory New and the other is Minimal Wear. This is the full explanation.

What float actually is

When Valve mints a CS2 skin (it drops in a match, you open a case, or it’s minted from the Armory), the server assigns it a random 32-bit float between 0.0 and 1.0. That number is permanent — it stays attached to that specific item instance for the rest of its existence. You can’t change a float without trade-ups, and trade-ups produce new items with new floats.

The float feeds two things: which wear bucket (the FN/MW/FT/WW/BS label that shows up next to the skin name) and the visual rendering (how much wear, scratches, and dirt the game applies to the texture).

The wear buckets

Five buckets, hard boundaries:

Factory New (FN): 0.00 ≤ float < 0.07
Minimal Wear (MW): 0.07 ≤ float < 0.15
Field-Tested (FT): 0.15 ≤ float < 0.38
Well-Worn (WW): 0.38 ≤ float < 0.45
Battle-Scarred (BS): 0.45 ≤ float ≤ 1.00

The boundaries are hard. A float of 0.069999 is Factory New, a float of 0.070001 is Minimal Wear, and the market prices the two as different items even though they’d look identical in screenshots. This is one of the biggest beginner traps — people see "0.06 vs 0.07" and assume they’re basically the same skin. The market doesn’t.

The float cap (per-skin range)

Not every skin can drop at every float. Valve sets a per-skin min/max range. Most skins use the full 0.00–1.00, but many are capped:

AK-47 Case Hardened: 0.00–0.75. Battle-Scarred copies exist; some pattern-graded examples are capped at the FN boundary because the seed is so rare it’s effectively never seen above ~0.05.
AWP Asiimov: 0.18–0.45. No FN or MW copies of this skin ever existed or ever will. The lowest-float Asiimov you can find is Field-Tested.
M4A4 Howl: 0.00–0.40. No Well-Worn or Battle-Scarred copies.
Karambit Doppler (Ruby phase): 0.00–0.08. Effectively only Factory New and the top end of Minimal Wear exist.

The float cap shapes the entire market for a skin. A skin capped below 0.15 will never have Field-Tested copies — the price gap between FN and MW is the whole market on that skin. The free inspect tool shows the float range for every skin you paste, so you can see at a glance which wear buckets are actually possible.

Why floats actually matter (and when they don’t)

Float matters for three reasons.

Bucket boundary premiums: A 0.06 FN and a 0.075 MW look the same in-game but trade at different markets. The "low-float MW" (just above 0.07) usually sells at a small discount to FN, and the "high-float FN" (just under 0.07) often sells above mid-FN because flippers covet the boundary.
Visual quality matters within a bucket: A 0.005 Factory New looks measurably cleaner than a 0.065 Factory New. For high-end items (Dragon Lores, Howls), buyers pay material premiums for ultra-low floats — sub-0.01 is its own collector tier.
Pattern-sensitive skins: For Case Hardened, Marble Fade, Doppler, and a few others, the pattern matters more than the float. A perfect Karambit CH blue gem at MW float (0.08) sells for more than a mediocre seed at FN float (0.05). Always check the pattern seed too — covered in our pattern tools guide.

When float doesn’t matter

For most market commodities (mid-tier rifles, agents, gloves without specific pattern collectibility), the buyer cares about the wear bucket but not the exact float within the bucket. A 0.16 FT and a 0.34 FT of the same skin will trade within a few percent of each other on most marketplaces. Don’t pay an FN-FT-grade premium for an in-bucket float that doesn’t produce visible difference.

How to check the float of any skin

Two paths.

In-game: right-click the item in your inventory → Inspect. The float shows in the lower-left of the inspect screen on CS2.
Out-of-game: paste the Steam inspect link into our free inspect tool. Modern self-encoded inspect links decode entirely in your browser — no API call, no third-party service touching the data. The tool shows the float to 8 decimal places, the wear bucket, the skin’s float range, and (for famous patterns like Case Hardened blue gems or Doppler phases) a rare-pattern classification.

A note on float-conscious selling

When you list a low-float copy, list it on a marketplace whose UI lets buyers find the float — CSFloat is the canonical example, with exact-float search. Listing a 0.005 FN on Steam Market gets you the same price as a 0.069 FN because Steam doesn’t expose the float in the listing — buyers shopping for low floats simply aren’t on Steam. Sell where the value of your specific copy can be discovered.