What is BUFF163?
BUFF163 is a Chinese marketplace for buying and selling Counter-Strike 2 cosmetics, and by trading volume it is the single largest name in the skin marketplace category, bigger than any Western venue. It is operated by NetEase, Inc., the Hangzhou-based technology and gaming company behind titles like Identity V and the former Chinese publisher of Blizzard games. The platform launched in August 2018 and, alongside CS2, also handles Dota 2, Rust and Team Fortress 2 items.
What makes BUFF163 matter is its gravity in the market, not any single feature. It carries the deepest liquidity anywhere (reviewers cite well over two million listings across games), and its pricing is authoritative enough that the "BUFF price" has become the trading community's default reference. When someone says a skin is worth a certain amount, they usually mean the BUFF figure, not the Steam Market. That reputation is why it sits mid-to-upper in our rankings with a SkinJudge Safety Score of 74/100: solid, but capped by friction rather than by any doubt over legitimacy.
Fees and key facts
BUFF163's 2.5% seller fee is one of the cheapest headline rates anywhere, but the numbers below tell only half the story. The real cost is access, not commission.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Seller fee | 2.5%, among the lowest of any major CS2 market |
| Buyer fee | None advertised, you pay the listed price |
| Currency | Chinese yuan (CNY / ¥) |
| Deposit methods | Alipay, WeChat Pay (Chinese accounts) |
| Cash-out methods | Alipay / WeChat Pay, verified Chinese accounts only |
| KYC | Chinese real-name ID verification required to sell |
| Registration | Phone/SMS or email; US numbers reported blocked |
| Supported games | CS2, Dota 2, Rust, TF2 |
| Company | NetEase, Inc. (Hangzhou, China) |
| Founded | 2018 |
Using BUFF163 from outside China
This is the whole story for most Western readers. BUFF163 was built for the Chinese domestic market, and its plumbing (real-name verification, Alipay, WeChat Pay) assumes a Chinese ID and bank account. Across 2024 and 2025 the platform tightened further. As CS2 trader Arrow (@ArowCS) documented, BUFF stopped letting anyone without a Chinese bank account sell skins, and US phone numbers have been reported blocked. The result is that selling and genuine cash-out are effectively off the table for non-Chinese users, who are left holding a CNY balance they can spend on the site but struggle to withdraw as cash.
Buying is more workable, but still fiddly. Because you can't simply load a Western card, guides describe funding an account through third-party top-up services that add roughly 3 to 8%, or through Alipay International's TourPass, and then working through a Chinese-language interface with browser translation. None of this is dangerous, it is just a lot of overhead. If your goal is to actually cash out skins, an EU-regulated venue like Skinport or an instant-payout market such as DMarket will serve you far better. BUFF163's value to an international player is mostly as a price benchmark and, occasionally, a cheap place to spend an existing balance.
Is BUFF163 safe?
On the fundamentals, yes. BUFF163 is backed by a large, publicly listed corporation rather than an offshore shell, which is a materially stronger footing than much of this industry. Reviewers repeatedly point to the 2022 incident in which BUFF reimbursed affected accounts out of its own pocket as a sign that the company absorbs losses rather than passing them to users. It is, by any reasonable read, a legitimate operator.
The caveat is that its public reputation is hard to read through Western lenses. BUFF163 barely registers on Trustpilot, a thin and unrepresentative page sitting around 2.6/5 from under a hundred reviews, because its actual user base is Chinese and doesn't review there. So its standing rests on community consensus and marketplace guides rather than a large aggregated score. To be clear, that external sentiment is not a SkinJudge community rating. BUFF163 currently has 0 verified reviews on SkinJudge, and our 74/100 is a Safety Score, not a user score. For how those are weighted, see our methodology.
Pros
- World's largest CS2 marketplace by volume, with the deepest liquidity anywhere.
- Very low 2.5% seller fee and no advertised buyer fee.
- Backed by NetEase, a major listed company with real corporate accountability.
- The "BUFF price" is the industry's reference benchmark, useful even if you never trade there.
- Track record of reimbursing users after a past security incident.
Cons
- Selling and fiat cash-out effectively require a Chinese ID and bank account.
- No practical way for non-Chinese users to withdraw real money.
- Depositing from abroad means third-party top-ups (around 3 to 8%) or workarounds.
- Chinese-first interface, and US phone numbers reported blocked.
- Almost no meaningful Western review presence to gauge sentiment.
The verdict
BUFF163 is the most important marketplace in CS2 that most Western players will never fully use. As the world's largest and most liquid venue, it sets the prices everyone else follows, and its NetEase ownership plus its willingness to make users whole after a breach make it genuinely trustworthy. This is not a scam-risk story. But trust and usability are different questions. For anyone outside China, real-money selling is closed and cash-out is impractical, so BUFF works best as a price reference and, at most, a place to spend an existing balance. That mix of high legitimacy and low real-world accessibility is exactly what a 74/100 Safety Score is meant to capture. If you want a market you can actually deposit to and cash out from, start with Skinport or a low-fee peer like CSFloat, and treat BUFF163 as the yardstick you check prices against.
