CS2 Knife Trade-Up: Which Coverts Give Which Knives | Skinwaste
CS2 Covert Trade-Up: What Most Guides Forget to Tell You About Knives
Marko Kulundžić
Marko Kulundzic is an accomplished content writer with years of experience creating engaging articles for gamers. His work has been published across various gaming platforms, and his clear, approachable writing style makes even complex topics easy to understand. A dedicated gamer himself, Marko brings first-hand knowledge to every piece he writes, ensuring each article speaks directly to the gaming community.
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CS2 Covert Trade-Up: What Most Guides Forget to Tell You About Knives
How the Covert Trade-Up Actually Works
Most players who sit down to run their first Covert knife trade-up assume the worst outcome is a bad knife. It is not. The worst case is that you spend the same money and walk away with gloves you did not want, because regular Coverts can produce either result, and which one you get is not up to you.
The core mechanic is simple enough. You drop five Covert (red) skins into the Trade Up Contract in your inventory, and the system outputs one Exceedingly Rare item from the pool linked to the cases your Coverts came from. Valve released this as part of the Re-Retakes update on October 22-23, 2025, and according to community-tracked Steam Market data from that period, some Coverts that had been sitting below €2 for years jumped above €30 within 48 hours of going live.
Two rules control everything else. First, you cannot mix StatTrak and regular skins in one contract. Second, gloves do not exist in StatTrak, so if all five inputs are StatTrak, the output can only be a StatTrak knife.
What Happens When You Mix Cases
If all five of your input skins come from the same case, the output can only come from that case's knife or gloves pool. If you pull Coverts from two different cases, the output pool splits proportionally between them. Three skins from Case A and two from Case B give you a 60/40 probability split between those two case pools.
Most guides mention this in passing. What they do not explain is that this split applies across the entire pool of possible outcomes, including every knife type in both cases. A 50/50 mix between a case containing a Butterfly Knife and a case containing a Gut Knife is sometimes worse expected value than just running a clean single-case contract, depending on current prices.
Case Pools: Why Your Knife Choice Starts Before You Open the Contract
Every knife in CS2 belongs to a specific case, and the cases your Coverts come from determine which knives you can receive, and some of those pools include several knife types with no way to target just one. Whether you can reliably aim at a specific knife or whether you are essentially rolling within a random set, depends entirely on which Coverts you buy.
Here is a breakdown of the most commonly targeted contracts, organized by how predictable the output is.
Karambit, M9 Bayonet, Gut Knife, Flip Knife, Bayonet
The Karambit pool is the one worth stopping on. Because the Karambit shares cases with the Gut Knife, the Bayonet, and three other classic knives, there is no trade-up path that targets a Karambit specifically. You are always rolling within the full classic knife set, and a Gut Knife DDpat in Field-Tested is a legitimate result. If that outcome would feel like a loss at your input cost, factor that in before you commit.
The Gloves Problem Nobody Leads With
When you use regular (non-StatTrak) Coverts, the output can be a knife or a pair of gloves. Both are Exceedingly Rare tier, and both draw from the same case pool. The contract does not let you specify which one you want.
Certain cases contain both knives and gloves in their output pool. The Glove Case, Clutch Case, and Broken Fang Case are common examples where your result could land on either side. Glove values vary enormously by pair and by float, with some combinations worth a few hundred dollars and others, like a Factory New Sport Gloves Vice worth significantly more.
The practical solution is checking whether your target case has gloves in the pool before you buy inputs. Cases that contain only knives with no gloves are the ones that keep your outcome fully predictable. StatTrak inputs sidestep the problem entirely, since gloves have no StatTrak version and the system routes all-StatTrak contracts to a knife result.
Float Math: What Actually Changed After the October Update
Every guide on Covert knife trade-ups says lower float inputs produce better output quality. That part is correct. What almost none of them explain is that the October 2025 Retakes update changed how that calculation actually works, and if you are running it the old way in your head, you are getting the wrong number.
Before the update, the system simply averaged the raw float values of your input skins. Now it normalizes each input first, by dividing each skin's float by its total float range rather than using the raw number. A skin with a range of 0.00 to 0.08 divides by 0.08, which is the same as multiplying by 12.5, so a 0.06 float on that skin carries far more weight in the average than a 0.06 float on a full 0.00 to 1.00 range skin. Only after those adjusted values are averaged does the result get mapped onto the output knife's own float range to produce the final float.
Why does this matter? If two of your five input Coverts have narrow float caps, like a skin that can only range from 0.00 to 0.10, a 0.06 float on that skin normalizes to a much higher value than a 0.06 float on a skin with a full 0.00 to 1.00 range, because the narrow-range skin divides by 0.10 instead of 1.00. You cannot just add up raw floats and divide by five. A tool like Tradeit, CS2Locker, or Pricempire's calculator will run the correct formula, and it is worth using one before buying inputs on anything float-sensitive.
The FN Target Problem
Some knife finishes cannot reach Factory New condition no matter what you put in, because their float range starts above 0.07. The AK-47 Redline is a well-known example: its minimum possible float is 0.10, so FN is structurally impossible. The same logic applies to certain knife finishes.
Before buying inputs for a float-specific contract, you check the target knife finish's min and max float caps. The output float formula is: outputFloat = minCap + (normalizedAvg × (maxCap - minCap)). If the minCap is already above 0.07, Factory New is off the table regardless of your inputs. Knowing this before you spend on premium-float Coverts saves a straightforward but costly mistake.
Which Trade-Ups Are Worth Running Right Now
The honest picture is that profitable Covert knife trade-ups got harder after October 2025. Covert skin prices spiked because they became the fuel for knife contracts, and knife values dropped because supply increased. The market has partially stabilized since then, but the easy pre-update EV margins are gone.
The contracts that still hold up tend to share a few characteristics. Single-knife pools let you price the contract against one specific knife rather than a weighted average across a range of outcomes. Cases where the Covert inputs are cheap relative to the average output value are the ones to target. The Classic Knife via CS20 Coverts has historically stayed cleaner than most because only two skins feed that pool, which keeps input supply lower and prices more stable.
The contracts that work against you are the broad ones with low-value knives in the mix. Before running any contract, you look up the floor price of every knife in the output pool, weight each by its probability share, sum those weighted values, and compare to your total input cost plus Steam's 15% fee on the sale side. If the weighted expected output does not beat your input cost by a meaningful margin, you are better off buying the knife directly.
One approach that tends to get skipped: placing Steam Market buy orders on your input Coverts rather than hitting listings directly. Orders sitting 15 to 20 percent below current ask prices frequently fill within a few days on less liquid skins, and that discount meaningfully changes the EV of the contract. Orders also force you to commit to a maximum price upfront, which tends to prevent the kind of impulse buy at inflated listing prices that quietly kills contract margins.
FAQ
Can you guarantee a specific knife from the CS2 Covert trade-up?
Yes, but only for knife types that exist in a single-case pool. The Butterfly Knife via Operation Breakout Coverts and the Classic Knife via CS20 Coverts are the cleanest guarantees. Most other knife types share case pools with multiple models, which means there is no way to target just one of them.
Do input floats matter if you just want any knife, regardless of condition?
If you are happy with any condition and any knife from the pool, float management does not change your outcome in a meaningful way. It matters specifically when you are targeting a float-sensitive finish where the price gap between Factory New and Minimal Wear is large enough to justify paying a premium for lower-float inputs.
Can StatTrak Coverts produce gloves?
No. Gloves do not have StatTrak versions, so the system cannot route a StatTrak input contract to a gloves result. All five StatTrak Coverts will always produce a StatTrak knife.
What happens with mixed-case inputs, exactly?
The output pool is split proportionally based on how many skins you contributed from each case. Three skins from Case A and two from Case B means a 60% chance of drawing from Case A's pool and 40% from Case B's pool. This split applies to every possible outcome across both cases, including low-value knives on either side.
Is it cheaper to trade up to a knife or just buy one outright?
Depends on the knife and whether you are float-sensitive. For average-float results on mid-tier knives, the contract can come out slightly cheaper than buying directly, especially if you source inputs via buy orders. For high-end float-specific targets like a low-float Karambit Doppler Phase 2, buying directly is usually less expensive than assembling premium-float inputs for a pool that includes four other knife types.
