CS2 Restricted Skins

Restricted is the purple grade, the third rung in the weapon-skin color system. Above it are Mil-Spec (blue), then Classified (pink), then Covert (red), with rare special items (knives and gloves) sitting outside the weapon ladder. Restricted is the practical mid tier: a clear step up in finish quality from blue Mil-Spec, but well short of the price jump that starts at pink Classified. Most cases and collections include several Restricted skins, so the grade covers a wide range of guns and styles.

Case drop odds put Restricted at 15.98% per opening, second only to Mil-Spec at 79.92%. That high pull rate means heavy, steady supply, so the bulk of Restricted skins settle near the Steam Community Market minimum and rarely move far from it. Demand is broad but shallow: plenty of players want a clean purple skin, but few will pay a premium when a similar look is one case away. The result is a deep pool of usable, good-looking finishes available for very little.

A trade-up contract takes 10 skins of the same grade and returns one skin of the next grade up, so 10 Restricted inputs produce a single Classified. The output's exterior is set by the average float of your 10 inputs, scaled into the result skin's own wear range, which is why low-float inputs are prized for trade-ups. Because cheap Restricted skins are abundant, they are the standard, low-cost fuel for farming Classified outputs. The contract only ever moves one grade, so Restricted cannot jump straight to Covert.

Within the grade, price is driven by exterior and float first: a Factory New or low-float copy of a desirable finish can cost many times a beat-up Field-Tested of the same skin. StatTrak versions add a separate premium because they are far scarcer than the standard variant. The largest spikes come from applied rare stickers, especially holos and craft combos from old tournaments, which can dwarf the base skin's value. A handful of finishes also gain from sought-after paint-seed patterns, though pattern only matters on skins where seed visibly changes the look.

Every Restricted skin has its own float cap, so not all of them reach Factory New; some only spawn from Minimal Wear or worse, which changes how clean the cheapest copy can look. As a buyer you are comparing the same finish across exteriors, where lower float means a cleaner surface and usually a higher price. StatTrak adds a kill counter and a price premium but is otherwise the identical finish. Reading the float and exterior of a specific listing tells you more about its real value than the grade label alone.

Against Mil-Spec, Restricted skins generally carry more detailed finishes and a touch more prestige, but both grades stay affordable thanks to high drop rates. Against Classified, the gap is supply: Classified drops at just 3.20%, roughly a fifth as often as Restricted, which is the core reason Classified prices sit much higher. If you want a wallet-friendly skin that still looks deliberate rather than default, Restricted is usually the best value band before prices climb at the pink tier.