Definition
Float is a 32-bit decimal value between 0.000 and 1.000, written into a CS2 skin at the moment Valve generates the item. It is immutable — opening a knife, applying stickers, or adding a name tag does not move it.
The number is a wear coordinate: lower means cleaner, higher means more beat-up. Steam shows you only the bucket — Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, Battle-Scarred — but the underlying number is what the market trades on once the price gets above the $50 line.
The exterior buckets
Valve fixes the same float→exterior mapping on every skin:
| Exterior | 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 |
A skin can also clip: its float range is restricted by the wear-mapping in items_game.txt. An AK-47 Case Hardened maxes out around 0.70, never reaching the upper Battle-Scarred range; an AK-47 Redline starts at 0.10, never appears Factory New. If a skin "doesn't exist in FN", clipping is why.
How float drives price
Below roughly $50, the exterior bucket alone is enough — buyers do not pay attention to a Field-Tested float of 0.18 vs 0.32. Above $50, the exact float starts moving the number.
A worked example, sampled from public Buff163 listings in early Q2 2026: an AK-47 Asiimov in mid Field-Tested (0.16-0.25) sits in the $25-35 band; the same skin at low FT (0.15-0.16) lifts to roughly $40-55; a Factory New copy under 0.04 float jumps into the $80-130 band. Same skin, same exterior tier — the float coordinate alone moves the price 3-4×.
The premium is collector-driven. A sub-0.005 float looks measurably cleaner in-game than a 0.069 float on most skins; sites like CSFloat publish global rank ("the 7th-lowest float AWP Asiimov ever recorded"), and that ranking is marketable. On rifles where the artist baked visible scuffs into the texture (Asiimov, Hyper Beast, Wildfire), low float is also a low-stack with a desirable pattern.
Float vs pattern: which dominates
Pattern wins on collectibles. A blue-gem AK-47 Case Hardened in Battle-Scarred is still a blue gem, and the pattern premium dominates the float discount. A Doppler Phase 4 in Field-Tested vs Factory New is mostly priced on float, because the phase already determines the color.
Rule of thumb: the further the pattern index is from "normal", the less float matters.
How the calculator uses float
The inventory calculator on this site reads the float on every item it values. It quotes the Steam Market median for the exact (skin, exterior, StatTrak / Souvenir) tuple, and it does not currently apply a per-skin float premium on top — for sticker- and float-heavy collector items, treat the calculator total as a baseline and price those rows manually.