Best Knife Skins in CS:GO 2022

Knife Skins are the Crown Jewel of a CS:GO inventory and here we will be ranking all of them that have been released in the game so far.

Knives in CS:GO has some of the most expensive skins. They separate you from most other players, have cool animations and look unique as they completely change the weapon instead of just recolors. With each knife skin, you get a completely different knife with new animations.

Some might think equipping the bigger knife skins like the Bowie knife extends its range but in reality, they all function the same. Some people also swear that they play better with a knife skin but although that is mostly placebo, you’d feel pretty amazing swinging out a Bayonet after every AWP shot you take as you get a nasty 4k in Banana of Inferno.

Read More: The Most Expensive AWP Skins in CS:GO

The Knife skins in CS:GO are notorious for being expensive but the worst thing of all is they have a very high starting price. While most gun skins can be purchased for as low as a couple of cents, the least expensive knife will cost you around $60 and even those look so bad you’ll be better off using the default knife. Expect to be shelling out $300-$500 for any decent-looking knife.

Best Knife Skins in CS:GO (A Complete Tier List)

Since the game’s release, Valve has released 19 different types of knife skins in CS:GO so far. Each knife also comes in different finishes so there are hundreds of knife variants. To keep this list simple and non-repetitive, we are only listing the knife types and not counting the finishes. We will be taking a look at the Vanilla finish for each knife. The Vanilla skins also have no wear value so is only available in one float.

Tier	Knife Skins
S-Tier	Bayonet, M9 Bayonet, Karambit, Butterfly Knife
A-Tier	Talon Knife, Huntsman Knife, Flip Knife
B-Tier	Skeleton Knife, Paracord Knife, Classic Knife
C-Tier	Ursus Knife, Survival Knife, Bowie Knife, Shadow Daggers, Nomad Knife
F-Tier	Gut Knife, Navaja Knife, Falchion Knife, Stiletto Knife

All the skins have been ranked on the basis of their looks along with their equip and inspect animations. One thing Valve has incorporated into knives is that some of them have secret unique equip and inspect animations. Those have also been accounted into the rankings. Like all tier lists, this is subjective so some of you might not fully agree with the above list. Prices are from the time of writing and are subject to change, but they will not stray far from the prices mentioned below.

Among all the knife skins released in CS:GO so far, here are all of them ranked according to the basis of looks & animations in the Vanilla finish:

19. Navaja Knife

Steam Market Price: $69

The Navaja knife is one of the newer knives added to the game in 2018. Being a knife released so late into the release of CS:GO, you might wonder, “What the hell was Valve thinking when they added this knife into the game?”

This is the ugliest-looking knife in the entirety of the game and the only one who likes this skin is probably your friendly neighborhood barber.

18. Gut Knife

Steam Market Price: $111

Next, we have the Gut Knife which was the defending champions as the ugliest looking knife in CS:GO. This knife was added to the game back in 2015 and has a decent equip animation. But the knife itself looks so bad earning it the position of the second ugliest knife in the game.

17. Falchion Knife

Steam Market Price: $143

The Falchion knife was added to the game in 2015 and is available from the Falchion case. Because of how ugly this knife is it is one of the cheapest knives and the case is one of the cheapest cases.

This knife does come in good finishes the main problem is that most of the skin is covered and the blade is very tiny.

16. Stiletto Knife

Steam Market Price: $192

The Stiletto knife was added to the game in 2016 with the “A New Horizon” update. The knife looks very bland and comes in the shape of a very thin blade.

Not only this knife looks bad in general and has no unique animations, but the blade surface also makes the cool finishes not stand out.

15. Nomad Knife

Steam Market Price: $205

The Nomad Knife is one of the newer knives, added to the game in 2019. The knife design itself looks pretty okay but the animations are just bland. It tried to be unique with the equip animation grabbing the blade and switching from left hand to right but raises safety concerns as demonstrated by the secret equip animation.

14. Shadow Daggers

Steam Market Price: $150

The Shadow Daggers have created one of the biggest hypes since their release for all the wrong reasons. Since its release, it became a huge meme in the community but later the demand decreased and so did the price.

The Knife or Daggers in this case the only ones of their kind released in the game and this unique aspect grants them the 14th position. Valve had a good idea to release a dual knife but the design execution was poorly made. We would definitely love to see another two-handed knife in the future but hopefully, that will have a better design.

13. Bowie Knife

Steam Market Price: $151

The Bowie Knife was named after Jim Bowie who was well known for fatally wounding 2 people with a “Big Knife” back in 1827. As the name suggests, the CS:GO variant is the biggest knife available in the game and it definitely has a menacing vibe. The animations are nothing to write home about though and place this knife in 13th position.

12. Survival Knife

Steam Market Price: $237

The Survival knife is one of the newer knives added to the game as part of operation Shattered web in 2019. This knife looks more like a glorified potato peeler and it ranks 12th among all the other knife skins.

11. Ursus Knife

Steam Market Price: $244

The Ursus Knife was released back in 2016 and is a really forgettable knife design. The knife looks pretty basic and lacks any unique design whatsoever. The equip and inspect animations are also quite basic but this knife does have a secret animation for both equip and inspect.

10. Classic Knife

Steam Market Price: $337

The Classic Knife pays homage to the Knife from the older Counter-Strike games. This was introduced with the CS20 collection celebrating 20 years of the franchise. The Knife looks like a polished version of the older knife with some secret animations. The reason it’s ranked 10th is mostly out of nostalgia for the older games.

9. Paracord Knife

Steam Market Price: $282

The Paracord knife was added to the game as a part of the Shattered Web case in 2019. This is a sleek and stylish-looking knife with a paracord wrapped around the grip, hence giving it the name.

8. Flip Knife

Steam Market Price: $180

The Flip knife is one of the classic knife skins added to the game back in 2015. It is a commonly available knife and is available in all the different knife finishes. The blade looks good by itself and color variants look bright and vivid on this skin.

7. Huntsman Knife

Steam Market Price: $205

The Huntsman knife is one of the meaner-looking knives in the game with a bulky but cooler appearance. It also has the spinning equip animation like the gut knife but it suits the Huntsman knife much better. It is one of the oldest knives available in the game releasing with the Huntsman case in 2014.

6. Skeleton Knife

Steam Market Price: $1174

The Skeleton knife is one of the newer knives in the game added with Operation Shattered Web in 2019. It features a unique appearance with the knife being almost all-blade and a center ring which is often used to maneuver the knife.

The knife also comes with extremely cool secret equip and inspect animations where the knife is spun around the center ring. This is also one of the most expensive knives on our list.

5. Talon Knife

Steam Market Price: $396

The Talon knife looks more like the Karambit’s younger brother, with a worse equip animation but cooler inspect animation. It was added to the game in 2016 with the Horizon update.

The regular inspect animation on this knife is the same as the Karambit but the secret animation is much more spectacular as the knife is spun around the finger indefinitely. What’s even better is the fact that compared to other skins with secret animations which are very rare and harder to achieve, the secret inspect animation on the Talon knife is very consistent making it a really fun knife to play with.

4. M9 Bayonet

Steam Market Price: $619

The M9 Bayonet is a very beefy-looking knife and it is also one of the classic high-tier knives in CS:GO. This knife was added to the game in 2015 with the Full Spectrum update. It features a military-grade knife with a sharp edge on one side and a serrated edge on the other. The hilt of the knife also has a hole to secure it to an M16 or an M4 and use it as a Bayonet.

3. Bayonet

Steam Market Price: $558

The M9 Bayonet’s younger brother, the standard Bayonet ranks higher as the 3rd best knife on our list. This was released alongside the M9 back in 2015. The reason why it ranks so high on our list is because of its insanely cool inspect animation. The entire knife flips around outside the hand in a motion that defies all the laws of physics.

2. Butterfly Knife

Steam Market Price: $1501

The Butterfly knife was added to the game in 2014 with operation Breakout. It is only available in the Breakout Case; a case that has spiked in price a whopping 93x since 2019. The Butterfly knife is also the most expensive knife on our list coming in at over $1.5k.

The knife is priced and ranked rightfully so being one of the most unique knives ever added to the game which also has mesmerizing equip and inspect animations. The finishes on this skin also look really beautiful making it our #2 best knife.

1. Karambit

Steam Market Price: $752

The Karambit was one of the first knives added to the game back in 2013 during the Full Spectrum update. Since then it has cemented its position as a signature knife in CS:GO.

The knife features a claw-like blade with a ring at the end held with a reverse grip which makes it stand out from most of the other knives. The primary and secondary attacks of these knives are swipes of the curved blade which looks really cool.

Perhaps the best feature of this knife is the smooth swinging motion of its equip animation where the knife is rotated around the ring. It also has a similar inspect animation which is very eye-catching making it the best CS:GO knife that exists to date.

It also is the most expensive non-pattern knife in the game in a finish with the ST FN Karambit | Crimson Web going for as much as almost $20k. But that’s a topic for another day.

Read More: The Most Expensive AWP Skins in CS:GO

So this wraps up the best CS:GO knife skins in the game. Note that rankings like these are purely subjective and you might disagree with some of them. The prices were listed as they were on the date of writing this article.