The Cheapest CS2 Knife Skins

The cheapest knife in CS2 is the Shadow Daggers | Bright Water: on October 20, 2026 it started at $50.29 on SkinsMonkey, in Battle-Scarred. If you would rather hold one blade than a pair of push daggers, the Navaja Knife | Safari Mesh was three cents behind at $50.32. Those two set the floor for the whole knife slot, and 12 of the 20 knife types in the game had a way in for less than $100.

How we ranked them: for every knife type we took the lowest SkinsMonkey price on October 20, 2026, in any wear and without StatTrak, and noted the finish and wear behind it. That snapshot is the “Cheapest on Oct 20” column in the tables below. The From and Up to columns are live and cover every wear from Battle-Scarred to Factory New, so they will drift after that date, and float or pattern can move a price further within one wear. The spread inside a single skin can be large: a Field-Tested Survival Knife | Boreal Forest cost $54.89 that day, a Factory New one $296.31.

This page is one of three knife lists we published on the same day, and none of them repeats another’s picks. For the top of the market, see the most expensive CS2 knife skins; for the knives we like most at any budget, see the best CS2 knives. You can trade for any knife on this page on SkinsMonkey, using the skins you already own as payment.

Three Knife Types That Start Around $50

The three cheapest knife types were within $3 of each other on October 20. Each card shows the cheapest wear that day, the Field-Tested price next to it and the live price.

The BEST CS2 Knives UNDER $150 (Cheap Knife Skins 2026)SkinsMonkey on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Our video picks the best-looking knives under $150. It was recorded earlier in 2026, so the prices in it are older than the ones on this page.

Entry Price for All 20 CS2 Knife Types

Sorted by the cheapest SkinsMonkey price on October 20, 2026, in any wear, without StatTrak. The “Cheapest on Oct 20” column is that snapshot; From and Up to are live. Each name opens its WIKI page, and the full catalogue is on our knife skins page.

Twelve knife types started under $100. The Gut Knife | Safari Mesh at $61.03 is the cheapest of the five knives from the 2013 Arms Deal update, and Rust Coat, added to older knives with the Spectrum Case in 2017, is the cheapest way into three of them: the Bowie Knife | Rust Coat, the Huntsman Knife | Rust Coat and the Falchion Knife | Rust Coat. The Ursus Knife | Safari Mesh at $69.16 cost well under half of the Stiletto, its sibling from the same Horizon Case.

Then the list jumps. No knife type started between $90 and $153 on October 20. The next eight are the shapes most players picture when they think of a knife, Flip, Skeleton, Bayonet and Stiletto sit between $150 and $175, then the Talon Knife | Boreal Forest at $271.72 opens the next band. At the very top, the cheapest Karambit | Safari Mesh and Butterfly Knife | Safari Mesh cost ten to eleven times as much as a Navaja in the same finish.

Safari Mesh, Rust Coat and the Other Budget Finishes

On 13 of the 20 knife types the cheapest way in is Safari Mesh. Rust Coat is the cheapest on the Bowie, Huntsman and Falchion, Boreal Forest on the Survival and Talon, Forest DDPAT on the Flip and Bright Water on the Shadow Daggers. Scorched and Urban Masked usually sit a few dollars above them. All of these are spray-painted or hydrographic camo with float ranges that reach Battle-Scarred, which is where most of the cheap supply comes from.

On a budget knife the finish barely moves the price, so pick the look you like. Six Navaja options were within $4 of each other on October 20: Safari Mesh, Forest DDPAT, Rust Coat, Boreal Forest, Vanilla and Scorched.

On a Karambit the same ladder costs real money. The Safari Mesh started at $507.17, Forest DDPAT at $513.27, Boreal Forest at $517.42, Urban Masked at $548.10 and Scorched at $566.65, so moving from the cheapest camo to Scorched adds almost $60.

Battle-Scarred or Field-Tested: Pay the Extra Cents

On cheap camo finishes the gap between Battle-Scarred and Field-Tested is a rounding error. On October 20 a Field-Tested Shadow Daggers | Bright Water cost 11 cents more than a Battle-Scarred one, a Kukri Knife | Safari Mesh 10 cents more and a Karambit | Safari Mesh $1.15 more. Wherever the cheapest finish under $100 comes in Field-Tested, the difference never passed 20 cents; on the premium ones it ran from 35 cents on the Bayonet to $12.60 on the Talon. We would take Field-Tested every time: you look at that blade for the whole match.

Minimal Wear is the first real step, 4% to 16% above Battle-Scarred on the knives we checked. Factory New is a different market: $296.31 for the Survival Knife | Boreal Forest, more than five times its Battle-Scarred price, and $1,367.67 for the M9 Bayonet | Safari Mesh, almost four times. Our guide to CS2 wear levels explains the float ranges behind each name.

Rust Coat works the other way round. Its float range starts at 0.40, so it only exists in Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred, and the Battle-Scarred copies carry the most rust. They are also the cheap ones: a Bowie Knife | Rust Coat cost $62.25 in Battle-Scarred and $84.67 in Well-Worn.

Vanilla Knives: Cheap on a Navaja, Pricey on a Karambit

A Vanilla knife has no finish and no wear rating, so every copy looks the same: the plain default model. On the budget knife types it is a real option. The Navaja Knife | Vanilla cost $54.17 on October 20, $3.85 more than the cheapest Navaja finish, and the Survival Knife | Vanilla ($65.18), Paracord Knife | Vanilla ($68.52) and Gut Knife | Vanilla ($78.98) stay under $80.

On the expensive shapes, Vanilla is a collector pick. The Karambit | Vanilla cost $1,372.73 and the Butterfly Knife | Vanilla $1,620.05, both close to three times the cheapest Safari Mesh on the same knife. If the plain look is what you want, buy it on a Navaja, Survival or Paracord.

Why No CS2 Knife Costs Less Than $50

Knives are the rare special item in weapon cases. The odds Valve’s Chinese partner Perfect World published for that tier are about 0.26%, roughly one knife or pair of gloves per 385 cases. At $2.49 per key, that is close to $960 in keys alone before you pay for a single case, which is why the case route makes no sense for a $50 knife. Our list of cases to open covers what each case can drop if you open them for fun.

The second reason is the trade-up change. Since the October 22, 2025 update, five Covert skins can be traded up into a knife or gloves from the collection of one of those skins (five StatTrak Coverts give a StatTrak knife). Most knives and gloves lost half of their price or more after the update, according to media coverage at the time, and entry finishes such as Safari Mesh went from around $100 to the $40 to $60 range. The cost of five cheap Covert skins now works as a soft floor: if knives dropped far below it, players would stop turning Coverts into them. Our trade-up contract guide explains the rules and why the knife you get is random. A year on, prices still sit around half of the old levels; our anniversary recap tracks the numbers.

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How to Get a Cheap Knife Without Overpaying

• Buy Field-Tested on camo finishes. On the camo knives under $100 it cost at most 20 cents more than Battle-Scarred on October 20.
• Check stock in the wear you want. A low Battle-Scarred price with no copies behind it does not help you. The Navaja was a case in point on October 20.
• Pick the knife type first, then the finish. The type sets the price band: about $50 to $90 for the budget twelve, $150 and up for the classic shapes.
• Skip StatTrak on a budget knife. All prices on this page are without it, and a kill counter adds nothing to how the blade looks.
• Value your inventory before you pay cash. Our CS2 Inventory Value Checker shows what your skins are worth at SkinsMonkey prices, so you know how close you already are to a $50 knife.

When you have the knife type and finish picked, put your skins in the trade window on SkinsMonkey and pick the copy you want from our bots; trades go through without waiting for another player. If you are building a full budget setup, the cheapest CS2 gloves pair well with any knife above.

More knife lists: the most expensive CS2 knife skins, the best CS2 knives and knife and glove combos for every color.

AC

Bottom line

Pick the knife type first, then buy its cheapest camo in Field-Tested, not Battle-Scarred.

If you just want a knife in your hands, the Navaja Knife | Safari Mesh and the Kukri Knife | Safari Mesh are the cheapest single blades, while the Shadow Daggers | Bright Water only make sense if you like push daggers. On the Navaja the camo finishes and Vanilla are only a few dollars apart, so paying slightly more for the look you like is fine. The one exception to the Field-Tested rule is Rust Coat, which only comes in Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred.

A Karambit, Butterfly or M9 Bayonet is a different budget: even their cheapest camo costs several times a Navaja, and Vanilla on those shapes is a collector pick. Whichever knife you go for, check that the wear you want is in stock, and value your inventory before you pay cash, because the skins you own can cover part of the trade on SkinsMonkey.

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