How to Compare Steam Listings With Completed Sales

Updated

API reference: POST /v1/prices/history · POST /v1/archive/steam

cs2.sh exposes Steam ask and bid OHLC separately from native Steam median sale price and purchase count, so both series can be aligned without treating order counts as sales.

Listings describe active seller asks and buyer bids. The archive's price is the median completed-sale price within a native Steam bucket.

Steam listing and sale datasets#

Dataset Price fields Volume fields Coverage
Quote OHLC Ask and bid open, high, low, close ask_volume, bid_volume order counts Since December 24, 2025
Native sales Median price Purchase volume Daily since April 26, 2013; hourly since May 9, 2026

Both series use USD Steam wallet value. Their field names must remain distinct because an order count does not imply execution.

Align the two histories#

Request steam at 1h or 1d from POST /v1/prices/history. Request the same exact regular item, interval, and UTC range from POST /v1/archive/steam.

Join on the normalized bucket boundary. Keep the quote open_time and close_time because they show what part of the bucket the order observations covered. Pair archive price with volume and quote closes with their order counts.

A sale median above or below the closing ask can be valid. Purchases occurred throughout the bucket, while close_ask is only the final observed listing floor.

Applicable endpoints#

Endpoint Returns Plans
POST /v1/prices/history Steam ask and bid OHLC Scale, Enterprise
POST /v1/archive/steam Native median sale price and purchases Scale, Enterprise
GET /v1/market/steam/latest Current orderbook context All plans

Join limitations#

  • ask_volume and bid_volume are active order counts. Archive volume is purchases.
  • A median sale price is not sale OHLC and cannot reconstruct individual trades.
  • Missing buckets on either side should remain unpaired rather than becoming zero or a carried value.
  • The listing series starts later than the daily sale archive. Earlier Steam analysis can use sales without quote OHLC.
  • Both endpoints support regular items only; phase variants are unsupported.

Read Steam listing history and Steam sale history for each series independently.