Karambit in CS2: The Full Finish Ladder, Priced Per Wear (Sep 2026)

A Karambit in CS2 cost anywhere from $365 to seven figures on 9 September 2026, and the gap is entirely finish, phase and pattern: the shape itself — a worn Safari Mesh — was $365–380, second only to the Butterfly among the twenty knife types. This file is the Karambit's price ladder, rung by rung, per wear, with the date on every number.

The ladder, floor to grail

Two rungs surprise people. The vanilla Karambit — no finish at all — costs more than a Tiger Tooth or a Marble Fade, because the plain steel blade is scarce and the community treats it as a statement. And the Tiger Tooth, which most price guides file as a premium finish, was the cheapest 0–0.08 finish on the shape at $840–945.

The floor and the cheap way in

The cheapest Karambit on 9 September 2026 was a Battle-Scarred Safari Mesh at $365–380, with Field-Tested and Well-Worn within two dollars of it and Factory New at $525. That floor bottomed at $491 on 25 October 2025 and has since drifted down rather than up as trade-up supply kept arriving, which is the opposite of what the headline finishes did.

If $365 is the budget, look one rung up before buying mesh. A worn Damascus Steel was $575–585, a Battle-Scarred Ultraviolet $437, a Battle-Scarred Lore $463 and a Field-Tested Crimson Web $590 — four finishes with far more character than Safari Mesh for $70–225 more. Our cheapest CS2 knives page does the same worn-versus-Factory-New maths for every shape.

The vanilla Karambit deserves its own line because it breaks the rule that paint adds value. With no finish at all it cost $990–1,150 on 9 September 2026 — more than a Tiger Tooth, a Marble Fade or a Black Laminate — and it has no float, so there is no worn copy to hunt for. Its all-time high was $2,843 on 5 May 2025 and its low $607 on 24 October, the same two dates as every painted finish, which tells you the market treats bare steel as a finish in its own right.

Fade, Doppler and the October 2025 receipts

The Karambit Fade is the cleanest measure of what the trade-up update did to a prestige knife. It peaked at $5,543 on 6 May 2025, hit $1,151 on 24 October 2025 — two days after Valve let five Covert skins become a knife — and sat at $1,750–1,850 on 9 September 2026. That is a 79% fall and a 55% recovery, leaving it 68% below the peak. The Doppler followed the same shape: $4,009 peak in May 2025 to $1,220–1,350 at the check-date. Gamma Doppler peaked higher, $6,774, and was $1,590–2,010.

The 16 cases matter here. The Karambit shares its pool with the Bayonet, Flip, Gut and M9 across every Arms Deal-pool container — CS:GO Weapon Case, eSports 2013, Operation Bravo, Weapon Case 2, eSports 2013 Winter, Winter Offensive, Weapon Case 3, Phoenix, eSports 2014 Summer, Vanguard, Revolver, Chroma 1–3 and Gamma 1–2. Five Coverts from any of them roll one of five shapes, so no trade-up guarantees a Karambit; but sixteen active supply lines is why Karambit spreads stayed tight through the crash while thinner shapes gapped. The full timeline is in how the trade-up update changed CS2 knife prices.

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and the blue gem

The phase and pattern market behaves like a different asset. Doppler Ruby ran $7,300–11,600 and Sapphire $4,400–13,000 on the check-date, each with over 250 listings — deep for five-figure items — and neither bottomed anywhere near the October 2025 lows of the standard phases. Gamma Doppler Emerald listings were thinner; a third-party estimate in August 2026 put a Factory New Karambit Emerald around $14,000, and we have not read a lower confirmed ask.

Crimson Web is the pattern finish that moved most in 2026. Factory New copies are rare because the float floor is 0.06, and the lowest FN ask was $6,400+ on 9 September with an all-time high of $18,007 dated 16 November 2025 — set after the crash, not before it. In Field-Tested the same finish was $590. Case Hardened is the other pattern finish: $1,540–1,870 for an ordinary Factory New, $615–685 worn, and then the blue-gem seeds, where pattern #387 in Factory New has drawn a reported $1.2 million offer and $1.5–2 million valuations without a single verified public sale. The most expensive CS2 knife file separates offers from sales.

Where to buy a Karambit

Use a cash market with float and phase filters, because on this shape those two fields are worth more than the wear label. CSFloat charges sellers 2% and exposes float, phase and pattern index on every listing; Skinport charges sellers 8% (6% above €1,000) and buyers nothing; DMarket sits around 2% on liquid items. Steam's 15% market fee and wallet lock make it a poor venue for anything on this ladder.

Cash listings: CSFloat, SkinBaron, DMarket, Skinport, white.market, Lis-Skins. Trading skins in: Tradeit, SkinSwap, Swap.gg, CS.TRADE. Some are affiliate links that may pay us a commission at no cost to you; they never change a band or a rank, and none is a case-opening site. The Karambit's place among all twenty shapes is in our ranked index of all CS2 knives.