Karambit in CS2: Skins, Cases & Prices

Short answer: the Karambit is a curved claw knife that has been in the game since the Arms Deal update of August 14, 2013. It comes in 24 finishes plus the plain "vanilla" knife (35 versions if you count every Doppler and Gamma Doppler phase). The finish sets most of the price, then wear and pattern: worn camo finishes such as Safari Mesh or Boreal Forest are the cheapest way in, while gem Doppler phases and blue gem Case Hardened patterns are the most expensive. Today's lowest price for every finish is in the live table further down.

Karambit skins by finish

Top-end

• Doppler: Ruby, Sapphire, Black Pearl. The jackpot phases.
• Gamma Doppler: Emerald. The green jackpot phase from the Gamma cases.
• Case Hardened blue gems. Pattern-driven; the best patterns are collector items. See most expensive CS2 knives.
• Fade (high %) and Crimson Web FN. The classic high-end looks.

Popular mid-tier

• Lore: gold engraved look from the Gamma Case.
• Doppler Phase 1–4 and Gamma Doppler Phase 1–4. Among the normal Doppler phases, Phase 2 (the pinkest) is usually the priciest, and Phase 1 or Phase 3 the cheapest. See Doppler phases explained.
• Marble Fade and Tiger Tooth: bright Chroma finishes.
• Slaughter, Autotronic, Damascus Steel, Ultraviolet.

Budget

• Safari Mesh, Boreal Forest, Scorched, Forest DDPAT, Urban Masked, Rust Coat.

Karambit prices by finish

Lowest listing across up to 11 marketplaces in the CS2TradeUp.gg price feed, without StatTrak or Souvenir, checked on 2026-11-11. Prices change every day, so open a skin for live prices.

Which Karambit wear to buy

Not every finish comes in every wear. Each finish has a fixed float range in the game's item data, and that decides which wears exist:

That thin 0.06–0.07 window is why a Factory New Crimson Web is so rare. On the two-wear finishes (Doppler, Fade and the like) the phase or pattern usually moves the price far more than the wear. On a budget camo finish, compare Field-Tested and Well-Worn screenshots before paying for a better wear: the difference is often hard to see in game. Wear limits are explained in the float guide.

How to check a Karambit before you buy

1. Float and pattern. Since Valve's Steam Community Market redesign of May 12, 2026, listings show float and pattern at a glance, and most third-party marketplaces list them too.
2. Doppler phase. On the Steam Market every phase sells under one name ("Karambit | Doppler") with no phase field. The phase is set by the paint index, which inspect tools read out: 415 Ruby, 416 Sapphire, 417 Black Pearl, 418–421 Phase 1–4; for Gamma Doppler 568 is Emerald and 569–572 are Phase 1–4. Don't pay a Ruby price for a red-looking screenshot.
3. Fade percentage. It is fixed by the pattern seed when the knife is created, and wear doesn't change it. Most Fades rate between about 80% and 100%, and a higher percentage sells for more.
4. Case Hardened. The pattern seed decides how much blue shows, so check the seed and both sides of the blade, not just the thumbnail. See the blue gem guide.
5. The final trade window. Make sure the item in the trade offer is the exact one you inspected.

Which cases have the Karambit?

The Karambit drops from 16 cases. In every one of them it shares the rare pool with other knives (Bayonet, Flip Knife, Gut Knife and M9 Bayonet), so a knife from these cases is usually not a Karambit. The table lists every case with the Karambit finishes it can give and the odds per case opened.

How the odds are calculated: every case gives a knife or gloves 0.26% of the time, and we split that evenly over the different knife finishes in each case's rare pool (counted from the case's item list, with a Doppler or Gamma Doppler counted as one finish whatever its phase), because Valve only publishes the 0.26% total.

Getting a Karambit for less

• Buy a budget finish in heavy wear. It's the cheapest way to have a Karambit in your hands.
• Knife trade up: since the October 22, 2025 update, five Covert skins can be traded for a knife from the case of one of the inputs. Every case that drops the Karambit has the same five knives with the same finishes in its pool, so under the usual odds model about 1 in 5 results is a Karambit, in a random finish from that case. Five StatTrak Coverts give a StatTrak knife. Price it first in the knife trade up calculator and read the knife trade up guide.
• Unboxing is a long shot: about one Karambit per 1,923 cases opened, in any finish. See CS2 case odds and the best cases for a Karambit.
• Compare with the Butterfly Knife, the cheapest CS2 knives and every other CS2 knife.

Buying a Karambit safely

• API key scam. A phishing site steals your Steam login and quietly creates a Steam Web API key on your account. A bot then cancels your real trade offer and sends a near-identical one from a lookalike account. Check steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey: if there is a key you didn't create, revoke it, change your password and deauthorize other devices.
• Trade protection. Since mid-July 2025, an item you receive in a trade is Trade Protected for 7 days: you can use it in game, but you can't trade, sell or modify it, and the trade can still be reversed. A seller you paid by PayPal, crypto or gift card can reverse a direct trade and keep the money, so don't pay a stranger outside a marketplace that holds the payment.
• Fake logins. Sign in only on steamcommunity.com itself, never through a link or QR code someone sends you in chat.

Frequently asked questions