Best CSGO Exchange Sites for 2023

HOW TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T GET CHEATED

It’s incredibly important to make sure that you check everything before you make an exchange or trade with another user. The main reason for this is the simple fact that Steam will not return your items if you get scammed by another user due to the impact it would have on the economy of the Store on Steam itself. This means if you get scammed, any items you lose are gone forever. You can find plenty of guides on Steam about how to avoid scams and you’ve got different security features such as Steam Guard, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

Firstly, make sure you’re using a trusted platform to sell and exchange any cosmetics and items on. Check out the ones on this page, as we’ve put these sites through the various tests to ensure they’re legitimate and any items you deposit are protected through various security measures, such as SSL encryption.

One thing to look out for is scammers, who will try to rush players through the whole process of exchanging things on Steam and make you oversee the smaller details that allow them to scam you – make sure you always take your time with the trading process.

Many items in the Steam Store will come in different rarities, which can make trading for the right one quite hard as the different rarities of the items will often share the same thumbnail picture. To know if you’ve got the correct rarity, make sure you hover over the items and inspect them. The difference in the rarity of items can mean a huge fluctuation in the value of the item- sometimes hundreds of dollars! So it’s always worth your time to double-check.

Make sure you also check out the Steam profile of the person who you’re trading items to or getting them from. You can find comments from previous Steam users about their experiences with them, leading to you discovering whether any previous users have had bad trades or deals.

WHAT IS AN EXCHANGE SITE?

If you’re into first-person shooter games, then you’ll most likely have heard of CS:GO. Many players see CS:GO as one of the games that started the hype for first-person shooters and the gameplay for the game hasn’t changed all that much over the 20 years it’s been around.

In order to keep up to date with standards as seen in other FPS games, within CS:GO, you can earn crates that contain different and rare skins for various items in the game. An exchange site is where you can swap these items and cosmetics out for other items.

This is great, as if you’ve got your hands on some skins which you know you aren’t going to use and are just sitting there in your Steam client gathering dust, you may as well put them to some use and exchange them for a skin you’re after or a skin that is ultra-rare.

These exchange sites can be viewed as better than the Steam Market, as at many of them you’re going to be able to not only exchange whatever skin you fancy but also sell them for real money. This is a great way to use your items and cosmetics to make a bit of extra money and also purchase other skins.

With the rise in popularity, some CS:GO gambling sites will actually accept skins as a form of payment. You will be able to get a set amount for the different items and cosmetics and then trade them in for credits or coins to spend on whatever games you want on the CS:GO casino.

HOW TO MAKE AN EXCHANGE IN COUNTER STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE

Trading itself is a vital part of Counter Strike Global Offensive and many other Steam games. making sure you can successfully and safely execute trades is a very important part of making sure you always have the skins you want and don’t have to hang onto the cosmetics you don’t want.

The whole system of trading is usually done through bots. These bots help to make everything convenient and run smoothly, but they can be subject to some fraud in the form of pretenders. These people will pretend to be the bots you’re trading your items to, intercepting the trade and running off with your hard-earned items and cosmetics. We’ll talk more about this in a later section of the guide.

The first thing you should do is to make sure that your steam account is eligible to trade items. To do this, you need to have Steam Guard active for at least 15 days (You can find various guides on Steam about how to set up Steam Guard) and have purchased something through the Steam store within one week but no longer than a year. When you meet these two requirements your account will be eligible for trading, but you should note that using your account on a different device can throw a few bumps in the system.

SETTING UP AN EXCHANGE

So the process for getting all set up with an exchange follows these steps:

1. First, open the Steam client or head to the website.
2. Now hover your mouse over your steam username. This will be between the chat and community tabs at the top of the screen.
3. Select the ‘friends’ button.
4. Find the person or bot you wish to trade with and then you enter your own profile.
5. Click the ‘more’ button, which may be a downward pointing arrow.
6. Select the button to offer an exchange of items.
7. Simply click, hold and drag any of the items that you want to trade from either inventory in the special exchange boxes.
8. You may not be able to see any items when you first enter the trade screen. If this happens, you’ll have to choose whichever game the item is from first, then they’ll be revealed.
9. Finally check the box that pops up to confirm everything and then click the ‘make offer’ button.

After you’ve gone through this process, the exchange items offer will be complete and whoever you are trading with will be able to see the items that you want to exchange and agree to the trade.

MAKING MONEY WHEN YOU EXCHANGE SKINS

Yes, you can, but it can be more difficult than it seems. If you just want to bump up your Steam balance by swapping and trading items, then you’ll need to be knowledgeable about rare items and cosmetics and their worth on the Steam market. You’ll also need an eagle eye on the exchange itself!

The knowledge you’ll want is a good clue about the hottest cosmetics and what’s in demand at the minute on the exchange. Knowing these things will help you snap up a bargain if it does appear, although this will be harder in the Steam community exchange market as plenty of other players will be looking for the same thing as you! In this case, it may actually be better to participate in exchange groups, as these will probably provide the best value for you.

EXCHANGE GROUPS

Exchange groups can be found in plenty of places, including dedicated websites, Facebook, Steam, Reddit, Twitter amongst others. They are great places to look if you’re looking to just exchange unwanted cosmetics with other players who are looking to bolster their own inventory. This works great as many players don’t want to pay the community market fee and would rather just straight swap their unwanted gear for something else.

The thing to look for in these exchange groups is someone who wants to trade a valuable item for a slightly less valuable one. So an example would be someone who is after a 50$ knife and would exchange a random $60 cosmetic for it. This doesn’t happen every day, but does happen so it’s definitely worth looking out for and when you do find a deal like this make sure you sell the item quickly, as waiting too long can cause your profit to drop!

When going through a process like this, it’s always a great idea to use the price tracker you can find on Steam or even on a third party site. These tools will help you to discover trends in the price of any item, allowing you to use these trends to rack up some profit. There are also seasonal trends to take note of when it comes to cosmetics – certain themed items rise in value with the corresponding season. In this case, your best plan of action is to get a hold of the items before the season occurs and the value of the item goes up, allowing you to get some profit by the time the season actually comes.

When it comes down to earning a day to day living from the exchange and trading of cosmetics and items for CS:GO, it’s entirely possible, but it would be hard. You’d have to follow the same rules as day to day stock traders, analysing the price of certain items on Steam, selling or trading high and buying low. It would be much more practical, easy and realistic to settle on making a few dollars here and there when you exchange items and cosmetics and then using that profit to invest in rarer, more expensive stuff. From here you can sell these for even more money!

BEST CSGO EXCHANGE SITES

Check our list for the best exchange sites for Counter Strike: Global Offensive. These sites have all been vetted by the team here, meaning they are all legitimate and trustworthy sites, passing our strict requirements.

We make sure you get some of the best deals and bonuses from these sites as well, so you can expect to find great bonuses such as cashout bonuses, reduced commissions, first deposit bonuses and daily or weekly giveaways.

We’ve also checked over the security and trustworthiness of each site, which we’ll go more into later on. But for now, know that when you trade and exchange skins on these sites, you’re in a safe environment.