CS2 Armory Probability: The Real Odds Behind Every Star You Spend

Updated November 1, 2026 · Written by Lena Ortiz · Reviewed by Milan Kovac

The Armory doesn't show you any odds in the game. You pick a collection, spend your stars and watch the reveal. So it's fair to ask what your chances actually are, especially when a single Covert from a new collection can sell for more than a stack of passes.

The good news is that the numbers exist. Valve has to publish drop odds for the Chinese release of CS2, run by Perfect World, and that disclosure includes the Armory. This guide pulls those official numbers out, turns them into per-skin chances, and shows what one Armory Pass (or five) realistically gets you.

How we wrote this: the odds come from the official probability disclosure on the Chinese CS2 site, csgo.com.cn, read on November 1, 2026. Armory prices and star costs come from the CS wiki and Valve's patch notes, and collection sizes from csgodatabase. The "per pass" figures are our own calculations from those published odds. We didn't buy passes or redeem anything for this page.

Claim free cases on Clash.gg, no code needed

The short version

• Armory weapon collections: Industrial Grade 80.026%, Mil-Spec 16.005%, Restricted 3.201%, Classified 0.640%, Covert 0.128% per redeem.
• Same rarity, same chance: every skin inside a tier has an equal shot, so a specific Covert in a two-Covert collection is 0.064%.
• Average redeems for a Covert: about 781 at 4 stars each, or around 78 passes.
• One pass: 40 stars, so 10 collection redeems, with roughly a 1.3% chance of at least one Covert.
• Five passes: about a 6% chance of at least one Covert across 50 redeems.
• Charm and sticker collections: High Grade 80.128%, Remarkable 16.026%, Exotic 3.205%, Extraordinary 0.641%.
• Limited Edition Item: not random at all. You always get the item; only float and pattern vary.

How the Armory works, in one minute

The Armory arrived in CS2 on October 2, 2024. You buy an Armory Pass, currently $15.99 in the US, and as you earn XP by playing you get stars, up to 40 per pass. You can stack up to five passes at once. Stars don't expire, and neither do passes.

You then spend stars in the Armory on different rewards. Going by the CS wiki's Armory table:

• Weapon collections cost 4 stars per redeem and give a random skin from that collection.
• Charm collections cost 3 stars and give a random charm.
• Weapon cases cost 2 stars and give you the case itself.
• Sticker collections cost 1 star and give a random sticker.
• Limited Edition Items cost a fixed amount and give one specific item. The AK-47 | Aphrodite was 125 stars before it left.

Valve rotates what's on offer. The July 8, 2026 update, the one that brought Cache back into Active Duty, added two new weapon collections, Arabesque and Spy Tech, plus two sticker collections, Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing. Older collections can leave the Armory when Valve decides, and once they're gone, the only supply is whatever players already redeemed or can trade up into.

If you're still deciding whether to buy a pass at all, our guide to whether the CS2 Armory Pass is worth it covers the value side. This page sticks to the probability.

Where the official Armory odds come from

China's rules require games to publish the odds of random rewards. Perfect World, which runs CS2 there, keeps a long disclosure page on csgo.com.cn that's updated as new content arrives. It's the closest thing we have to an official odds sheet, and the community uses it for case odds too.

For the Armory, the page says two things that matter:

1. Within the same pool, items of the same rarity have the same chance. So there's no hidden weighting that makes one Covert rarer than the other.
2. There are separate odds tables for weapon collections and for charm and sticker collections, because they use different rarity scales.

The disclosure lists the weapon collections by their Chinese names. They line up with the Overpass 2024, Graphic Design, Sport & Field, Spy Tech and Arabesque collections. One honest caveat: these numbers apply to the version of CS2 that Perfect World runs. Valve doesn't publish a separate global sheet, but the rarity ratios match the classic 5:1 pattern CS has used for years, so the community treats them as the global odds too.

Armory weapon collection odds, tier by tier

Here's what each 4-star redeem gives you, per Valve's disclosure:

Each tier is five times rarer than the one below it. That's the same ladder you see in weapon cases, just shifted down one step: cases start at Mil-Spec, while these collections start at Industrial Grade. The practical result is that four out of five redeems give you an Industrial Grade skin, which usually sells for a few cents.

Notice what's missing, too. Armory collections have no knives or gloves, and there's no StatTrak version of their skins. The "gold" slot you know from cases doesn't exist here.

The chance of a specific skin

Because every skin in a tier has the same chance, you can divide the tier's odds by the number of skins in it. Take the two collections added in July 2026. According to csgodatabase, Arabesque and Spy Tech each have 17 skins: 6 Industrial Grade, 4 Mil-Spec, 3 Restricted, 2 Classified and 2 Covert. That gives:

So if you're chasing one particular Covert, like the AWP | Sovereign Flame from Arabesque, you're looking at about 1 in 1,563 per redeem. That's before you even think about getting a nice float on it.

For an older collection with a different number of skins per tier, do the same sum: take the tier's percentage and divide by how many skins are in that tier.

What one Armory Pass really gets you

A pass gives you 40 stars. Spent entirely on a 4-star weapon collection, that's 10 redeems. Using the published odds, the chance of getting at least one item of each tier across those 10 redeems works out like this:

And if you stack more passes:

Even 10 passes, about $160, leaves you with an 88% chance of no Covert at all. That's the part most "should I buy the pass?" videos skip.

How many passes for a Covert, on average?

The average number of redeems before a Covert is 1 divided by 0.128%, so about 781 redeems. At 4 stars each, that's around 3,125 stars, or roughly 78 passes, which is about $1,250 at $15.99 a pass. It's an average, not a countdown. Every redeem is independent, so a bad streak doesn't make the next one more likely to hit.

Charm and sticker collection odds

Charms and stickers use the sticker rarity scale, and the disclosure gives them their own table:

The disclosure lists this table for the Armory's charm sets (Missing Link, Small Arms, Dr. Boom and the Missing Link Community charms) and its sticker sets, including Elemental Craft, Character Craft, the 2025 Community stickers, Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing. Charm redeems cost 3 stars and sticker redeems 1 star, so a full pass gives you about 13 charm redeems or 40 sticker redeems. At 0.641%, one pass of sticker redeems has roughly a 23% chance of at least one Extraordinary sticker, while a pass of charm redeems is closer to 8% for an Extraordinary charm.

Cases from the Armory follow case odds

Some Armory slots give you a weapon case instead of a skin, for 2 stars. That's not a random draw at all: you always get the case. The odds kick in when you open it, and those are the normal weapon case odds from the same disclosure:

• Mil-Spec 79.923%
• Restricted 15.985%
• Classified 3.197%
• Covert 0.639%
• Rare special item (knife or gloves) 0.256%
• StatTrak: 1 in 10 for any item that can be StatTrak

Opening a case still needs a key, so the 2 stars get you the box, not what's inside. Our CS2 case odds guide explains those numbers in more detail, and our key price guide covers the key cost.

Limited Edition Items: 100%, with a catch

The Limited Edition slot is the one reward in the Armory with no rarity roll. You choose it, pay the stars and get the item. Earlier Limited Edition Items, going by the CS wiki, were the XM1014 | Solitude (15 stars), Desert Eagle | Heat Treated (25) and M4A1-S | Solitude (25). The AK-47 | Aphrodite cost 125 stars and left the Armory on July 1, 2026.

The randomness is in the item itself. Float decides the wear, and for pattern skins like the Heat Treated or the Aphrodite, the pattern seed decides how it looks. Our AK-47 Aphrodite odds guide works through what that means for wear and gem patterns. At the time of writing we couldn't confirm a new Limited Edition Item in the Armory, so check the Armory tab in game before you save stars for one.

Wear odds on Armory skins

Valve doesn't publish wear odds, so there's no official number for how often an Armory skin comes out Factory New. The best data comes from a large CSFloat analysis of real items, which found the game picks a wear bracket first and then a float inside it. Those brackets work out to about 3% Factory New, 24% Minimal Wear, 33% Field-Tested, 24% Well-Worn and 16% Battle-Scarred, for skins with the full float range.

Put that together with the tier odds and a Factory New Covert from a 4-star redeem is roughly 0.128% times 3%, or about 1 in 26,000. A Factory New specific Covert in a two-Covert collection is about 1 in 52,000. Treat those as rough estimates. Many skins have capped float ranges, which changes the picture, and we explain that in our float value guide and our Factory New odds guide.

Is buying passes for the odds a good bet?

Run the numbers and the answer is usually no, at least as a money decision. Most redeems are Industrial Grade or Mil-Spec skins worth cents to a dollar or two. The few big hits are rare enough that the average value of a pass sits below its price, which is how Valve makes money from it, the same as with keys.

That doesn't make the Armory bad. If you enjoy the drops, want the collection's skins for your loadout, or like the charms, it can be fun. Just treat it like buying a game, not like an investment:

• Set a pass budget before you start, and stop when it's gone.
• Don't chase a specific Covert with passes. Buying that skin on the market is almost always cheaper than 1 in 1,563 redeems.
• Sell or trade up the junk. Ten Industrial skins from the same collection can go into a trade-up contract for one Mil-Spec. Our trade-up contracts guide explains how.
• Ignore "it's due to hit" thinking. Every redeem has the same odds, no matter how many duds came before.

If gambling or spending on random drops stops feeling fun, take a break. Our responsible gambling page lists free tools and support.

Armory odds vs case sites

On a case site you can usually see the odds for every item before you open, and the site's own published edge. Clash.gg shows the odds table for each case and supports provably fair checks, which we cover in our Clash.gg provably fair guide. CSGOEmpire also publishes its game odds and has its own case section.

That transparency doesn't change the maths: the house still wins over time on every case site, just like Valve does with the Armory. What it changes is that you can see exactly what you're paying for before you click. If you'd rather try opening a few cases without paying, both sites give new users something free through our links.

Try CSGOEmpire with a free case using code FREECASES4U

Common Armory probability myths

"Valve lowers your odds after a big hit." There's no evidence of that, and the disclosure says items of the same rarity have the same chance in each pool. Each redeem is independent.

"Older collections have better odds." All Armory weapon collections on the disclosure use the same tier odds. What changes between collections is how many skins share each tier.

"Redeeming all your stars at once is luckier." It isn't. Ten redeems at once or ten redeems spread across a month have exactly the same combined odds.

"Charms are the best value because they're cheaper." Each charm redeem is 3 stars instead of 4, but the charm scale is just as top-heavy. Whether it's better value depends on what the charms in that set sell for, not on the star cost.

Bottom line

CS2 Armory probability isn't secret. Valve's own disclosure puts an Armory weapon collection Covert at 0.128% per 4-star redeem, about 1 in 781, with Classified at 0.640% and most of your redeems (80%) landing on Industrial Grade. One pass gives 10 redeems and only about a 1.3% shot at any Covert. If you want a specific skin, buy it. If you want the fun of the drop, set a budget, and enjoy whatever comes out.

See case odds before you open on Clash.gg, free cases through our link, no code needed