cs2.sh vs SteamWebAPI: Which CS2 Price API Fits?

Short answer: cs2.sh refreshes BUFF about every 5 minutes and stamps each row with collected_at; SteamWebAPI's own BUFF API page states its BUFF data refreshes roughly every 6 hours. For cheap, breadth-first multi-market lookups plus per-item float data, SteamWebAPI (free tier, plans from ~€20/mo) is the cheaper entry; for fresh BUFF data, intraday OHLC, multi-year archive history, real liquidity buckets, and full-depth Steam orderbooks in one USD schema, cs2.sh ($75/$200, unlimited requests) is the deeper tool.

SteamWebAPI (steamwebapi.com) and cs2.sh (cs2.sh) are both multi-market CS2 price APIs, split along breadth vs depth. SteamWebAPI is the cheaper, modular choice: free tier, plans from ~€20/mo, Steam plus 12 named marketplaces (Buff163 and Youpin in one call), float/paint-seed endpoints, and Doppler/Gamma Doppler phase prices — good for budget multi-market lookups and per-item float data. cs2.sh goes deep on the highest-volume marketplaces: ~5-minute refresh, intraday OHLC candles (5m/30m/1h/1d), archive to 2023 with Steam median sale history to 2013, real sale-volume liquidity buckets, full-depth Steam orderbooks, and 6 marketplaces in one USD schema at $75/$200 with unlimited requests. Both have a free option to test — cs2.sh's 2-day developer key and SteamWebAPI's free tier.

If you are weighing several options, see the full roundup, Best CS2 Skin Price APIs in 2026, or the sibling comparisons: cs2.sh vs Pricempire, cs2.sh vs CSGOSKINS.GG, and CS2 Price API vs Scraping the Steam Market.

At a glance: cs2.sh vs SteamWebAPI#

The sharpest gaps are BUFF refresh cadence — ~5 min on cs2.sh versus ~6h on SteamWebAPI — and history depth: cs2.sh documents per-endpoint depth to 3+ years, while SteamWebAPI's third-party history depth is undocumented.

Where SteamWebAPI is genuinely strong#

SteamWebAPI's edge is breadth on a budget ("10+ Marketplaces, One API Call"):

• Cheap, modular entry. Free tier (2 req/min, 10/mo), €1/mo Free+, Starter from ~€20/mo. You can test for almost nothing and pay for one endpoint family without buying everything. (As of June 2026; confirm at steamwebapi.com/pricing.)
• Both Chinese marketplaces in one call. Its 12 named third-party marketplaces include Buff163 and Youpin alongside Skinport, DMarket, Waxpeer, Skinbaron, BitSkins, Tradeit, CSFloat, and Skinflow.
• Per-item float and paint seed. Dedicated float endpoints (/steam/api/float) return float value, paint seed, and screenshots, plus sticker data for CSFloat listings — per-item condition data.
• Doppler and Gamma Doppler phase prices for those knife finishes.
• Buy orders and volume fields. The unified item endpoint carries buy orders plus 24h/7d/30d/90d volume, quantity, and demand.

For a budget tool that needs cheap multi-market lookups plus per-item float data, SteamWebAPI is the better choice.

Where the two products diverge#

1. BUFF freshness#

SteamWebAPI's own BUFF API page states its BUFF data refreshes roughly every 6 hours, with liquid items more often. At that cadence BUFF prices can lag the live market by hours — fine for a daily valuation, weak for alerting or arbitrage. cs2.sh refreshes BUFF on a ~5-minute cycle (source-dependent, ~5–10 min) and stamps each row with collected_at, separate from the marketplace's own updated_at. The freshness gap between ~6h and ~5 min is what matters for BUFF-anchored pricing, alerting, and arbitrage.

2. History depth and shape#

SteamWebAPI documents Steam history up to 365 days (/steam/api/history), daily. Its third-party history depth is undocumented (no stated "X years back" for non-Steam marketplaces), and while an OHLC format is mentioned, granularity and retention are not. History cannot be backfilled, so an undocumented retention window can prove too shallow only after you have built on it. cs2.sh publishes depth per endpoint: third-party marketplaces reach 3+ years via archive, archive price plus total_supply and hourly_volume go back to 2023, Steam median sale history is daily since 2013 (hourly since May 2026), and continuous OHLC candles (5m/30m/1h/1d) carry open/high/low/close plus volume per bucket. cs2.sh is the only API in this comparison that publishes intraday OHLC history; SteamWebAPI's Steam history is daily, and third-party retention is undocumented.

3. Modular plans vs all-in access#

SteamWebAPI's plans are modular per endpoint family: Prices, History, Float, and Items are separate subscriptions, each metered on its own monthly cap, in EUR. One family is a real saving. Full coverage stacks several bills — add a mid-tier prices plan to History Pro (€35), Float Small (€20), and Item Small (€15) and that is four separate EUR subscriptions, so the cheap-entry framing fades. cs2.sh sells two all-in plans: Developer ($75/mo, current prices) and Scale ($200/mo, everything), one bill, unlimited requests on both. Narrow scope favors SteamWebAPI; broad scope favors a single all-in plan.

4. Currency and FX risk#

SteamWebAPI prices in EUR; USD customers carry FX risk on every invoice. cs2.sh bills and returns prices in USD.

5. Data types SteamWebAPI does not expose#

Per its public docs, SteamWebAPI does not offer named liquidity buckets or estimated sale time, BUFF float-range price bands (e.g. 0.00 – 0.01), or full-depth Steam orderbook history. cs2.sh exposes all three. A liquidity bucket plus estimated_sale_time tell you whether a position can be exited and roughly how long it takes — computed from real daily sale volume and traded value over rolling 30- and 90-day windows, recomputed daily, as absolute buckets rather than a relative percentile. Float-range bands price a float window directly, which a single per-listing float cannot. Orderbook history reconstructs the bid/ask book over time beyond the current top of book. For valuation, risk, or trading tools, these are the fields that determine what you can build.

Data model and marketplace coverage#

cs2.sh returns both sides of the book and both kinds of price: per source it returns ask (lowest listing) and, where buy orders exist, bid (highest buy order) plus volumes; daily CSFloat completed-sale price/volume since 2022; native Steam median sale price/volume; and OHLC candles at 5m/30m/1h/1d preserving open/high/low/close, volume, and sample count. For liquid items, high-frequency ask/bid sampled at 5m–1h is the most accurate current-price signal; the sale archives carry long-term and illiquid-item analysis. SteamWebAPI's unified item endpoint returns buy orders and 24h/7d/30d/90d volume fields (useful demand context) and states an OHLC format is available, though its depth and granularity are not documented.

cs2.sh's data store holds over 20 billion price events (~4 TB), each a unique time × market_hash_name × source point. SteamWebAPI covers more named third-party marketplaces — Steam plus 12 (Buff163, Youpin, Skinport, DMarket, Waxpeer, Skinbaron, BitSkins, Tradeit, HaloSkins, CSGO Market, CSFloat, Skinflow) — so for breadth across many marketplaces in one call, it leads. cs2.sh covers the highest-volume marketplaces — BUFF, Youpin, CSFloat, and Steam (Skinport and C5Game round out 6) — at depth per source: orderbooks, sale volume, archive history, and variant pricing, normalized to one USD schema keyed by market_hash_name. Both cover Buff163 and Youpin.

Variants, liquidity, and special data#

• Variants. Both price Doppler and Gamma Doppler phases. cs2.sh additionally prices Case Hardened tiers per source and serves variant price history (OHLC for each variant), scored for liquidity independently from the base item. It is the only API here with full structured variant pricing (Doppler + Gamma Doppler + Case Hardened, per source) and the only one with variant price history; SteamWebAPI's Case Hardened pricing and variant history are not documented.
• Liquidity. cs2.sh returns a named bucket per exact market_hash_name and per variant (extremely_illiquid to extremely_liquid) from real daily sale volume and traded value over rolling 30- and 90-day windows, plus estimated_sale_time. SteamWebAPI publishes no comparable named-bucket signal.
• Float data. SteamWebAPI returns per-item float, paint seed, and screenshots. cs2.sh returns BUFF float-range and fade-range price bands — what a given float window costs, rather than the float of a specific listing.

API ergonomics and limits#

cs2.sh uses Authorization: Bearer <key>, requires Accept-Encoding: gzip on every /v1 request, returns JSON keyed by market_hash_name, and accepts up to 100 items per POST. Every plan includes all 6 marketplaces, unlimited requests, and 10 requests/second per user (~864k calls/day by rate alone). SteamWebAPI authenticates via an Authorization header, claims proxy buffering to avoid 429s, and meters monthly caps by plan and endpoint family (e.g. Pro+ at 1M req/mo). cs2.sh meters a per-second rate; SteamWebAPI meters monthly quotas split across modular plans.

Pricing and plans (as of June 2026)#

cs2.sh prices in USD; SteamWebAPI prices in EUR.

Comprehensive SteamWebAPI access means stacking per-family plans in EUR; cs2.sh's one Scale plan ($200/mo, USD) covers prices, OHLC history, archive, liquidity, BUFF market data, and Steam orderbooks at unlimited requests. See the full cs2.sh pricing.

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

• Pick SteamWebAPI if you want the cheapest multi-market lookups, per-item float and paint-seed data on a budget, or a free tier to prototype against. It fits inventory/float utilities, breadth-first price displays, and projects needing one or two endpoint families that can tolerate ~6h BUFF freshness and EUR billing — for example a Steam-inventory valuer that reads a paint seed and a rough price.
• Pick cs2.sh if you need the freshest BUFF data (~5 min), intraday OHLC and multi-year archive history with documented depth, real sale-volume liquidity buckets and estimated sale time, full-depth Steam orderbooks, per-source variant pricing with variant history, and a single USD schema with unlimited requests. It fits trading analytics, charting, alerting, valuation, and arbitrage — anything where a six-hour-old BUFF price corrupts the result, or where you need to know whether a position can be sold and how long that takes.

FAQ#

How fresh is SteamWebAPI's BUFF data? SteamWebAPI's own BUFF API page states its BUFF data refreshes roughly every 6 hours, with liquid items refreshed more often, so BUFF prices can lag the live market by hours. cs2.sh refreshes BUFF roughly every 5 minutes (source-dependent, ~5–10 min) and exposes collected_at so you can verify freshness.

Does SteamWebAPI have OHLC history? SteamWebAPI states an OHLC format is available, but granularity and retention are not documented, and its documented history is mainly Steam (up to 365 days, daily). cs2.sh serves intraday OHLC candles at 5m / 30m / 1h / 1d via /v1/prices/history, recorded since December 24, 2025, with archive price/supply/volume back to 2023. cs2.sh is the only API in this comparison publishing intraday OHLC.

Is SteamWebAPI cheaper than cs2.sh? For a single endpoint family, yes — SteamWebAPI has a free tier and plans from ~€20/mo versus cs2.sh's $75/mo entry plan. But its plans are modular per endpoint family, so comprehensive access (prices + history + float + item) means stacking subscriptions in EUR. cs2.sh's $200/mo Scale plan covers everything in one USD plan with unlimited requests. cs2.sh also offers a free 2-day developer key for testing. (Pricing as of June 2026.)

Does SteamWebAPI cover Buff163 and Youpin? Yes. SteamWebAPI covers Steam plus 12 named third-party marketplaces including both Buff163 and Youpin, alongside Western marketplaces. cs2.sh also covers both Buff163 and Youpin, within its 6-marketplace USD schema. The difference is BUFF freshness (~6h on SteamWebAPI vs ~5 min on cs2.sh) and the depth of history and orderbook data.

Best SteamWebAPI alternative for historical data? cs2.sh is a strong SteamWebAPI alternative when historical data is the priority. It documents history depth per endpoint: third-party marketplaces to 3+ years via archive, archive price/supply/volume since 2023, Steam median sale history daily since 2013 (hourly since May 2026), and continuous intraday OHLC candles. SteamWebAPI's third-party history depth is not clearly documented.

Does SteamWebAPI provide liquidity buckets or estimated sale time? No. SteamWebAPI does not publish named liquidity buckets or an estimated sale time. cs2.sh's /v1/liquidity/items returns a named bucket (from extremely_illiquid to extremely_liquid) plus estimated_sale_time for every item and variant, computed from real daily sale volume — recomputed daily, not a relative percentile.

Does SteamWebAPI offer full-depth Steam orderbooks? SteamWebAPI returns buy orders within its item fields, but full-depth Steam bid/ask orderbook history is not documented. cs2.sh serves full-depth Steam bid/ask orderbooks both latest and historical.

Is there a free way to try cs2.sh? Yes. cs2.sh offers a free 2-day developer key — sign up at cs2.sh or ask in Discord. It is a time-limited trial, not a perpetual free tier.

Which CS2 price API is better for arbitrage? For arbitrage, BUFF data freshness is the critical variable. SteamWebAPI's BUFF data refreshes roughly every 6 hours per its own documentation; at that cadence an arbitrage signal built on BUFF ask prices may already be closed by the time you act. cs2.sh refreshes BUFF every ~5 minutes (source-dependent, ~5–10 min) with a collected_at timestamp on each row, and adds full-depth Steam orderbooks and real sale-volume liquidity buckets.

Final recommendation#

Choose SteamWebAPI for cheap, breadth-first multi-market lookups and per-item float data where ~6h BUFF freshness and EUR billing are acceptable. Choose cs2.sh when freshness (~5 min BUFF), intraday OHLC, history depth, liquidity, orderbooks, and a single USD schema with unlimited requests drive your project. The two can coexist — SteamWebAPI for cheap float lookups, cs2.sh for the analytics layer.

Start with cs2.sh · Get a free 2-day developer key · Read the docs · See the live demo

Sources#

• cs2.sh docs — https://cs2.sh/docs
• cs2.sh data coverage — https://cs2.sh/docs/data-coverage
• cs2.sh pricing — https://cs2.sh/docs/pricing
• cs2.sh prices/history endpoint — https://cs2.sh/docs/api-reference/prices-history
• cs2.sh liquidity/items endpoint — https://cs2.sh/docs/api-reference/liquidity-items
• cs2.sh archive/steam endpoint — https://cs2.sh/docs/api-reference/archive-steam
• cs2.sh LLM corpus — https://cs2.sh/llms-full.txt
• SteamWebAPI — https://steamwebapi.com
• SteamWebAPI documentation — https://steamwebapi.com/api/steam/documentation
• SteamWebAPI BUFF API — https://steamwebapi.com/buff-api
• SteamWebAPI pricing — https://steamwebapi.com/pricing

Verified June 15, 2026.

Disclosure#

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