Published methodology · Audit-friendly
Five-factor scoring with published weights. Real-money test cycles every month. No site gets ranked from a press kit or a marketing screenshot. If you ever spot a ranking that contradicts our own data, tell us, corrections show up on the public changelog.
Step 1
Every ranked site gets scored 0–10 on each factor. Total score is a weighted average. Weights are below, not invented for this page, they're the ones we actually use in the spreadsheet.
Wall-clock time from deposit → play → withdrawal request → funds in our account / skin in our Steam inventory. Tested with real money on real accounts. The single most underrated factor in CS2 gambling, sites with great UX and slow payouts are a scam vector.
Can the round outcome be reproduced from the published seed/nonce after the fact? We replay the HMAC math in our own browser via the verifier tool. Sites that don't expose the math get downgraded.
Real EV of the welcome offer after wagering requirements. A '$1,000 100% match' with 50× WR is worth less than a '$500 50% match' with 5× WR. We compute the actual playthrough cost.
How much paperwork between you and your money. Some sites require ID verification only above a threshold; some demand it on every withdrawal. Lower friction = higher score.
Time to a real human answer on live chat, not a bot autoreply. Tested at peak hours and off-peak. Sites without live chat get a max score of 5/10 here.
Weights sum to 100. We rebalance the weights at most once a year, last rebalance was January 2026 (raised "payout speed" from 25→30 because reader feedback showed it's the most actionable factor for site selection).
Step 2
Every ranked site goes through this loop each cycle. The data you see on the rankings is from the most-recent cycle, not from the initial review.
We deposit $25–$100 from our test account. We time the deposit confirmation. If the site doesn't credit within the published window, that's a flag.
Crash, coinflip, case opening, whichever the site is built around. We log seed/nonce on every round so we can replay the math via the verifier.
Crypto first if supported; skin payout if not. Wall-clock timer from withdrawal request to funds-in-our-wallet. This is the number that ends up on the withdrawal tracker.
Pull seeds for 3–5 rounds, run them through our HMAC verifier locally. If outcomes don't match, the site loses its provably-fair score.
Update the spreadsheet. If the score moved enough to change the rank order, we ship the change with a public note on the changelog.
Step 3
We earn affiliate commission when readers sign up to a site through our tracked links. That funds the operation. It does NOT move rankings.
Multiple operators have offered to pay for top-3 placement. We refuse on principle, the rankings would lose their meaning. The Apr 22 ranking change (Clash.gg from #2 → #1, 500.Casino from #1 → #2) is an example: 500.Casino is a partner with a bigger affiliate payout per signup, and they still got bumped because the test data justified it.
Thin always-visible bar at the top of every page on the site says exactly what we earn on. FTC-aligned and (in our view) trust-building, readers prefer sites that are upfront about incentives.
Every ranking move is documented at /changelog with the reason. If a partner drops 3 slots after a payout-speed regression, you can see the exact change and the data that triggered it.
Step 4
We cover 34 CS2 sites we earn nothing on. They get the same review depth as our partners, just no Claim button. A further 14 directory brands issued us a code after their review was written; those carry a tracked link and say so on their own pages.
Most CS2 affiliate portals only cover sites they earn on. That makes their "best 5" rankings effectively a "best 5 of the 5 we get paid by" list. We cover 29 additional sites, Skinport, CS.MONEY, DMarket, Tradeit.gg, ShadowPay, Swap.gg, BitSkins, SkinBaron, CSFloat, CS.Deals, white.market, LIS-SKINS, SkinsMonkey, iTrade.gg, CS.Trade, Skinflow.gg, DatDrop, Key-Drop, DaddySkins, GGSkins, CaseHug, LootBox, R1-Skins, DuelBits, Roobet, CSGOPolygon, Chicken.gg, Skinwaste, LootBear, under an explicit "editorial-only" treatment. No Claim button, no SKINSVAULT code, no /go/ tracking.
This costs us money. A reader who picks Skinport over a partner generates zero revenue. We do it because the alternative, ignoring sites we don't earn on, would be dishonest.
Step 5
Sites we won't list at all, even if they offered top-tier affiliate rates. Documented criteria, public list, removal process if conditions change.
A site lands on the blacklist for any of: documented theft of user funds, rigged provably-fair (caught after-the-fact reverse-engineering), no-pay on withdrawals beyond a certain pattern, predatory targeting of minors, or evasion of KYC requirements that put users at legal risk in their home jurisdiction.
We publish the blacklist publicly with the reasoning. If a site cleans up, they can come off. That's also documented.
Spot a problem with our methodology? Tell us.
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