cs2.sh vs Pricempire: Which CS2 Price API Fits You?

Short answer: Pick Pricempire for the widest market coverage, built-in arbitrage, and portfolio valuation; pick cs2.sh for intraday OHLC, deeper history, and per-source depth on the highest-volume marketplaces. Pricempire covers the most marketplaces (marketed as "40+" / "58", including trading bots and gambling sites) and bundles cross-market arbitrage, market-cap and trade-count metas, and Steam inventory valuation. cs2.sh covers 6 highest-volume marketplaces (BUFF, Youpin, CSFloat, Skinport, Steam, C5Game) at greater depth: high-frequency ask/bid, intraday OHLC candles (5m/30m/1h/1d), multi-year archive with total_supply and sale volume since 2023, Steam median sale history back to 2013, sale-volume liquidity buckets with estimated sale time, and full-depth Steam orderbooks. Both have a free option (cs2.sh a 2-day developer key; Pricempire ~100 test calls).

At a glance#

Where Pricempire is the better fit#

Pricempire's core advantages are market breadth, built-in arbitrage, and portfolio tooling. It covers 40+ marketplaces (versus cs2.sh's 6), ships a cross-market arbitrage screener, values Steam inventories, and returns market-cap and trade-count metas — real features cs2.sh does not ship. On a depth-first API you would build the comparison, valuation, and market-cap layers yourself.

Widest market coverage. Pricempire markets "40+" and "58 trusted marketplaces," with the live list fetched from /v2/meta/providerKeys. Confirmed keys include buff163, buff163_buy, buffmarket, youpin, skinport, csgoempire, csgoroll, c5game, tradeit, bitskins, cs.money, dmarket, cs.deals, lis-skins, shadowpay, steam, skinswap, cs.trade, lootfarm, waxpeer, white.market, and uuskins. If you need pricing from small trading-bot or gambling marketplaces cs2.sh does not track, Pricempire is the better fit. (Source: pricempire.com/api; github.com/pricempire/developers.)

Built-in cross-market arbitrage. /v4/paid/comparison is a screener returning profit, roi, fee, and the from/to provider per opportunity — arbitrage ROI without building the comparison logic yourself.

Portfolio and inventory valuation. /v4/paid/items/inventory values a Steam inventory and returns float_value, paint_seed, and sticker data per item. cs2.sh does not value inventories.

Market-cap and trade-count metas. /v4/paid/items/metas returns trades_1d/7d/30d/90d/180d, rank, marketcap, liquidity, count, Steam last_7d/30d/90d, and market_first_date. Item images and a CDN (/v4/paid/items/images) are also included.

Free testing tier. Pricempire offers a free tier for evaluation (around 100 test calls per published research). cs2.sh also has a free option — a 2-day developer key — so both can be tried before paying. (Source: official Pricempire v4 API docs, supplied 2026-06-15; pricempire.com/api.)

Where cs2.sh is the better fit#

cs2.sh goes deep on six highest-volume marketplaces — BUFF, Youpin, CSFloat, and Steam at the core, with Skinport and C5Game — backed by a price database of over 20 billion price events and nearly 4 TB.

Intraday OHLC. cs2.sh records OHLC candles at 5m, 30m, 1h, and 1d via POST /v1/prices/history — the only API in this comparison with intraday history; every other option here is daily-only. Each bucket preserves open/high/low/close for ask (and bid where the source has bids), plus ask_volume/bid_volume, open_time, close_time, and sample_count. Pricempire's history endpoint returns a flat data[mhn][unix_ts] = price_in_cents map. A flat daily map limits backtests to close-to-close strategies; OHLC lets you model entries against the day's high or low, weight by volume, and reconstruct candle charts.

Sale volume and completed-sale archive. For liquid items, high-frequency ask/bid sampled at 5m–1h is the most accurate current-price signal, and cs2.sh serves it. For long-term analysis and illiquid items, where listing prices can sit far from where items clear, it also exposes sale data: CSFloat completed-sale price and volume since 2022 via POST /v1/archive/csfloat, Steam native median sale price and volume via POST /v1/archive/steam, and per-source ask_volume/bid_volume. The archive endpoint also returns total_supply and hourly_volume since 2023.

Sale-volume liquidity buckets plus estimated sale time. GET /v1/liquidity/items returns a named bucket per exact market_hash_name and per variant — extremely_illiquid to extremely_liquid — scored from real daily sale volume and traded value over rolling 30- and 90-day windows, recomputed daily, plus an estimated_sale_time (for example under 1 hour, 2 - 6 hours). The buckets are absolute, not a percentile rank, so liquid means the same thing across the catalog. Pricempire exposes liquidity as a single 0–100 score with no named buckets, no estimated sale time, and no documented sale-volume basis. A bare score sorts items against each other but cannot tell you whether a specific knife sells today or sits for a week.

The only API here with full structured variant pricing and variant history. cs2.sh prices Doppler phases, Gamma Doppler phases, and Case Hardened tiers individually per source via a variants object, with version codes such as p1–p4, ruby, sapphire, blackpearl, emerald, and t1–t4, each scored for liquidity and tracked in OHLC history independently of the base item. Pricempire shows Doppler phases on its website and in item metadata, but a structured per-phase price field in the prices API is not documented.

BUFF float-range and fade-range price bands. cs2.sh serves BUFF float-range and fade-range price data (for example a 0.00 – 0.01 band) via GET /v1/market/buff/latest, with OHLC history since May 19 2026. Pricempire does not.

Full-depth Steam orderbooks. cs2.sh provides full-depth Steam bid/ask orderbooks via GET /v1/market/steam/latest, with snapshot history since June 9 2026. Pricempire does not offer an orderbook feed.

The sharpest contrast: price history#

History is where the two APIs diverge most.

Pricempire history. GET /v4/paid/items/prices/history is Enterprise-tier only. It requires app_id plus a single provider_key — one provider per request. from_date/to_date default to the last 30 days; the maximum range is 180 days per request. The response is data[mhn][unix_ts] = price_in_cents: a flat per-day map with no OHLC, no bid/ask split, no candle volume. Pricempire markets multi-year ("5 years") history, but API access is gated to the $199.90/mo Enterprise plan; the $99.90/mo Standard plan has none. (Source: official Pricempire v4 API docs, supplied 2026-06-15; pricempire.com/api.)

cs2.sh history. History depth is per endpoint, not a single flat number:

• OHLC candles (/v1/prices/history): continuously recorded since December 24 2025; intervals 5m/30m/1h/1d.
• Archive price, total_supply, and sale hourly_volume (/v1/archive/history): since 2023.
• CSFloat completed-sale archive (/v1/archive/csfloat): since 2022.
• Steam median sale history (/v1/archive/steam): daily since April 26 2013, hourly since May 9 2026.
• Third-party marketplaces (BUFF, Youpin, C5Game, CSFloat, Skinport): 3+ years via archive.

All cs2.sh history and archive endpoints are on the Scale plan ($200/mo), spanning all 6 sources in one request with no 180-day cap. See the data coverage page for the full breakdown.

To chart BUFF and Skinport side by side over a year, Pricempire needs multiple Enterprise requests, each one provider and each capped at 180 days of daily closes. cs2.sh returns open/high/low/close (and bid/ask) across all 6 sources in a single request, at intervals down to 5 minutes, plus multi-year archive and Steam median data to 2013 with no per-request cap.

API ergonomics#

Both APIs are REST/JSON with bearer-token auth.

cs2.sh. Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer <key>, and send Accept-Encoding: gzip on every /v1 request. POST endpoints accept up to 100 items per request and bodies up to 1 MiB, with partial success via an errors[] array — a malformed item name does not fail the whole batch. Items are keyed by canonical market_hash_name, so the same key joins prices, history, liquidity, variants, and orderbooks without per-source ID mapping. Live prices refresh about every 5 minutes (source-dependent); /v1/prices/history updates continuously.

Pricempire. Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer <key> or ?api_key=, with a sandbox at sandbox-api.pricempire.com. Prices are returned as integers in cents (for example 2500 = $25.00). The prices endpoint adds 7d/30d/60d/90d averages and medians via the avg and median params, and supports metas, type, and inflation_threshold. Refresh cadence runs roughly every 5 minutes, comparable to cs2.sh. Published research (not the official endpoint docs) cites a rate limit around 120 requests / 10 seconds before a 60-second lockout. (Source: official Pricempire v4 API docs, supplied 2026-06-15; rate figure from pricempire.com research — flagged as research-sourced.)

Pricing and request model#

Pricempire meters a monthly call quota; cs2.sh rate-limits per second with no monthly cap.

The two models reward different workloads. Pricempire's monthly quota is easy to reason about for low, predictable volume — a daily refresh on a fixed item set never approaches 10,000 calls — but gets tight under frequent polling, since 100,000 calls/month averages about 139 per hour. cs2.sh caps burst rate instead of monthly volume; because POST endpoints take up to 100 items each, one 10 req/s second moves 1,000 items, so full-catalog sweeps and frequent polling are straightforward. The trade-off is the rate cap itself: you cannot fire 200 requests in a single burst. The other decision point is history — cs2.sh includes it on Scale at $200; Pricempire requires Enterprise at $199.90, and Standard has none. See the cs2.sh pricing page for current details.

Which should I use, cs2.sh or Pricempire?#

Pick Pricempire if you want the broadest CS2 market aggregator with arbitrage and portfolio tooling, where price history is Enterprise-only, daily, capped at 180 days per request, and not OHLC:

• You need the widest market coverage, including small trading-bot and gambling marketplaces.
• You want built-in cross-market arbitrage ROI without building the comparison yourself.
• You are building a portfolio or inventory-valuation product.
• You want market-cap, trade-count metas, item images, and a CDN out of the box.
• Your call volume fits a fixed monthly quota.

Pick cs2.sh if you want a depth-first CS2 price API across 6 high-volume marketplaces with intraday OHLC, multi-year sale-volume archive, Steam median data to 2013, and named liquidity buckets — the strongest alternative to Pricempire for historical CS2 prices when you need candles and sale volume:

• You need OHLC candles (5m/30m/1h/1d) for charting or backtesting.
• You need high-frequency ask/bid alongside sale volume and completed-sale data.
• You need multi-year archive (since 2023) and Steam median sale history to 2013.
• You need sale-volume liquidity buckets with estimated sale time.
• You need per-source Doppler / Gamma Doppler / Case Hardened variant pricing with variant history, BUFF float/fade-range bands, or full-depth Steam orderbooks.
• You want unlimited requests at 10 req/s and history included on the Scale plan.

For more options, see the roundup of the best CS2 skin price APIs, and the sibling comparisons cs2.sh vs CSGOSKINS.GG, cs2.sh vs SteamWebAPI, and CS2 price API vs scraping the Steam market.

FAQ#

Is Pricempire's price history API free? No. Pricempire's GET /v4/paid/items/prices/history endpoint is Enterprise-tier only ($199.90/mo as of June 2026). The $99.90/mo Standard plan has no historical data access at all. Pricempire does offer a free testing tier (around 100 test calls) for evaluating the API, but it does not include production history. cs2.sh includes full OHLC history and multi-year archive on its Scale plan at $200/mo, and offers a free 2-day developer key.

Does Pricempire have OHLC data? No. Pricempire's history endpoint returns a flat daily price map (data[mhn][unix_ts] = price_in_cents) with no open/high/low/close, no bid/ask split, and no candle volume. cs2.sh records OHLC candles at 5m/30m/1h/1d intervals across all 6 of its marketplaces, each preserving open/high/low/close, ask/bid volume, and sample count.

How many markets does each cover? Pricempire markets "40+" / "58 trusted marketplaces," including trading bots and gambling sites, with the live list fetched from /v2/meta/providerKeys. cs2.sh deliberately focuses on 6 highest-volume marketplaces (BUFF, Youpin, CSFloat, Skinport, Steam, C5Game), all normalized to USD and keyed by market_hash_name. Pricempire has the broader count; cs2.sh concentrates on the marketplaces with the most trading volume and goes deeper on each.

How does liquidity data compare between cs2.sh and Pricempire? cs2.sh returns named liquidity buckets (from extremely_illiquid to extremely_liquid) plus an estimated_sale_time, computed from real daily sale volume and traded value over rolling 30- and 90-day windows and recomputed daily. The buckets are absolute, so liquid means the same thing for every item. Pricempire returns a single 0–100 numeric score with no named buckets, no estimated sale time, and no documented sale-volume basis — useful for sorting items, but it cannot tell you whether a specific item will actually sell today.

Which is cheaper for price history? For price history specifically, cs2.sh's Scale plan ($200/mo) includes OHLC across all 6 sources plus multi-year archive and Steam median data to 2013. Pricempire requires the $199.90/mo Enterprise plan for any history, and that history is one provider per request, daily granularity, capped at a 180-day range. The prices are close, but cs2.sh delivers OHLC candles, more sources per request, and deeper history at a comparable price.

What is the best Pricempire alternative for historical CS2 prices? cs2.sh is a strong Pricempire alternative when you need historical CS2 prices, because it serves OHLC candles (5m/30m/1h/1d), multi-year archive with total_supply and sale volume since 2023, and Steam median sale history since 2013 — versus Pricempire's Enterprise-only, daily, 180-day-capped, single-provider flat price map. For widest market breadth, arbitrage, or inventory valuation, Pricempire remains the better fit.

How far back does cs2.sh history go? History depth is per endpoint: OHLC candles since December 24 2025; archive price, total supply, and sale volume since 2023; CSFloat completed-sale archive since 2022; and Steam median sale history daily since April 26 2013 (hourly since May 9 2026). It is not a single flat number across all endpoints.

Does cs2.sh value Steam inventories like Pricempire? No. Pricempire offers inventory valuation via /v4/paid/items/inventory, returning float value, paint seed, and sticker data per item. cs2.sh does not value inventories; it focuses on per-market pricing, OHLC history, sale volume, liquidity, and orderbooks. For a portfolio or inventory product, Pricempire is the better fit.

Which API has unlimited requests? cs2.sh uses an unlimited-request model rate-limited at 10 requests/second per user on every plan. Pricempire uses a metered monthly call quota: 10,000 calls/month on Standard and 100,000 calls/month on Enterprise. cs2.sh suits frequent polling and full-catalog sweeps; Pricempire's quota suits low, predictable volume.

Final recommendation#

Choose Pricempire if breadth, built-in arbitrage, or portfolio/inventory valuation is your priority — it covers the most marketplaces and bundles the most adjacent tooling. Choose cs2.sh if depth and data quality matter most: intraday OHLC, sale volume and completed-sale data, named liquidity buckets, full structured variant pricing with history, BUFF float/fade-range bands, full-depth Steam orderbooks, and multi-year history with Steam median data to 2013 — all with unlimited requests at 10 req/s and history included on Scale. Both offer a free option to try first.

Start with cs2.sh · Get a free 2-day developer key · Docs · Live demo

Sources#

• cs2.sh public docs and LLM corpus: https://cs2.sh/docs, https://cs2.sh/llms-full.txt
• Official Pricempire v4 API docs (supplied to cs2.sh team, 2026-06-15)
• Pricempire API and marketing pages: https://pricempire.com/api
• Pricempire developer reference: https://github.com/pricempire/developers

Verified June 15, 2026.

Disclosure#

Published by cs2.sh. Pricing as of June 2026; verify on each vendor's site.