cs2.sh vs Pricempire for CS2 Price Data

Choose cs2.sh when the product depends on CS2-specific history depth, completed-sale series, structured variants, liquidity with estimated sale time, BUFF range markets, or full Steam orderbooks. Choose Pricempire when 40+ marketplace coverage, multi-game support, portfolio data, or built-in comparison tooling matters more.

The products optimize for different breadth#

Pricempire is a broad market and trading platform. Its official page advertises 40+ marketplaces, one-minute price updates, CS2 plus other game economies, and APIs for prices, items, indexes, inventory, and comparison.

cs2.sh covers six CS2 marketplaces: BUFF, Youpin, CSFloat, Skinport, Steam, and C5Game. Its narrower marketplace list is paired with sell listings (asks), buy orders (bids), active-order counts, completed sales, ask and bid OHLC, variants, liquidity, BUFF range buckets, and Steam depth.

Current differences#

Pricempire's current API documentation labels item price history as Enterprise-only and limits each requested date range to 180 days. Its marketing page separately advertises more than five years of historical data. If a project needs a backfill longer than 180 days, verify how successive ranges and retention work before purchase.

What cs2.sh returns for a CS2 item#

One request carries all six marketplaces under a single market_hash_name, each with its own collection time:

curl -X POST https://api.cs2.sh/v1/prices/latest \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <<YOUR_API_KEY>>" \
  -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" --compressed \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"items": ["USP-S | Printstream (Factory New)"]}'

"buff": {
  "updated_at": "2026-07-26T18:50:53Z",
  "collected_at": "2026-07-26T18:53:10.67Z",
  "ask": 109.72,
  "ask_volume": 463,
  "bid": 106.17,
  "bid_volume": 41
}

ask is the lowest sell listing, bid the highest buy order, and ask_volume and bid_volume the active order counts behind them. updated_at is the marketplace's own timestamp and collected_at is when cs2.sh read it, so freshness is checkable per source rather than per response.

For history, POST /v1/prices/history returns OHLC per bucket with sample_count, open_time, and close_time. Request ranges are bounded per request rather than per account:

A 1d request has no range limit at all, so a multi-year backfill is one call rather than a sequence of capped windows.

Pick cs2.sh when#

• The same product needs current prices, intraday OHLC, and completed-sale archives.
• Steam daily sale history back to 2013 or CSFloat daily sales from 2022 matters.
• Doppler, Gamma Doppler, or Case Hardened variants must stay structured across sources and history.
• A liquidity class and estimated sale-time range is more useful than a relative numeric score.
• BUFF float or fade ranges and Steam full-depth orderbooks are product inputs.
• A high-volume backfill would exceed a monthly call allowance.

Pick Pricempire when#

• The application needs far more than six marketplaces.
• Rust, Dota 2, TF2, or other game economies share the same integration.
• Portfolio pricing, marketplace comparison, inventory, indexes, and trading data should come from one broader platform.
• A numeric liquidity field and provider-level current pricing are sufficient.
• A metered monthly request plan fits the expected workload.

Validate before deciding#

Run the same exact items through both providers, including an illiquid skin, a Doppler phase, and an item missing on one source. Compare returned source identity, timestamp meaning, null handling, variant selection, and the historical series you will actually use.

Disclosure: this comparison is published by cs2.sh. Pricempire features and prices were checked against its official API and documentation pages on August 4, 2026.