TradeUpBot finds profitable CS2 trade-up contracts by scanning real marketplace listings across CSFloat, DMarket, and Skinport. This guide walks through the platform from sign-up to executing your first trade-up.
Getting Started
Head to tradeupbot.app and sign in with your Steam account. There's no registration form — Steam authentication is the only login method. Once signed in, you're on the Free tier with access to 10 sample trade-ups per rarity tier. No credit card required.
The main interface is the trade-up table. Across the top, you'll see tier tabs: All, Knife/Gloves, Covert, Classified, Restricted, and Mil-Spec. Each tab shows trade-ups for that rarity tier. Click a tab to filter.
Reading the Trade-Up Table
Each row in the table represents a complete, executable trade-up contract built from real listings. Here's what each column tells you:
- Profit — Expected profit in dollars, accounting for marketplace fees on both buying inputs and selling the output. Green means positive expected value.
- ROI — Return on investment as a percentage. A 25% ROI on a $40 cost means $10 expected profit.
- Chance — The probability that the trade-up produces a profitable outcome. A trade-up can have positive expected value but only 30% chance to profit if the profitable outcome is rare but very valuable.
- Cost — Total cost to buy all input listings, including marketplace buyer fees.
- EV — Expected value of the output, weighted across all possible outcomes by probability.
- Best / Worst — The highest-value and lowest-value possible outcomes with their probabilities. This gives you the range of what could happen.
The default sort is by profit, but sorting by chance-to-profit is often more practical. A trade-up with 90% chance to profit and $5 expected profit is a safer bet than one with 15% chance and $40 expected profit — unless you're willing to absorb losses on the misses.
Expanding a Trade-Up
Click any row to expand it. The expanded view shows three things:
Outcome distribution chart. A horizontal bar chart showing every possible output skin, its probability, its estimated value, and whether it's profitable (green) or not (red). This is the core of the trade-up — you can see exactly what you're betting on.
Input listings. The specific marketplace listings that make up this trade-up. Each input shows the skin name, float value, condition, price, and which marketplace it's listed on. Each input links directly to the marketplace listing so you can buy it.
Trade-up metadata. Collection breakdown, output float calculation, and the mathematical details behind the contract.
Subscription Tiers
Free tier gives you unlimited trade-ups with full filters, search, sorting, and direct listing links. Data has a 3-hour delay — enough to explore the platform and understand how trade-ups work, but not enough to act on opportunities before they disappear.
Pro ($6.99/mo) adds real-time data with no delay — you see trade-ups the moment they're discovered. The Claim system lets you lock a trade-up's listings for 30 minutes so no other TradeUpBot user can see them while you're purchasing. You get 20 verifications per hour, 10 claims per hour, and up to 5 active claims at once.
Using Verify
Before buying anything, hit the Verify button on a trade-up. Verify calls each marketplace's API to check whether the input listings still exist and at what price. The trade-up's profit, cost, and EV update in real time based on current data.
This matters because marketplace listings are live inventory. A listing that existed 20 minutes ago when the discovery engine found it might already be sold. Verification catches this before you commit money. If a listing is gone, the trade-up is flagged so you know it's no longer executable as shown.
Pro users get 20 verifications per hour. Use them on trade-ups you're seriously considering, not as a browsing tool.
Using Claim
Claim is Pro-only. When you claim a trade-up, its input listings are hidden from all other TradeUpBot users for 30 minutes. This gives you an uncontested window to purchase each input from the marketplace.
Claims are limited: 10 per hour, with up to 5 active at once. They expire automatically after 30 minutes. The claim doesn't reserve the listing on the marketplace itself — other buyers outside TradeUpBot can still purchase them. But it eliminates competition from other TradeUpBot users, which is the primary threat for high-profit trade-ups.
The workflow: find a promising trade-up, verify it to confirm availability, claim it, then go buy each input from the linked marketplace listings.
Tips for Finding the Best Trade-Ups
Sort by chance-to-profit for consistent returns. Trade-ups with 80%+ chance to profit will win most of the time. The profit per trade-up is usually modest ($5-20), but the consistency adds up. This is the lower-variance strategy.
Sort by profit for highest upside. The top-profit trade-ups often have lower chance-to-profit — maybe 30-50%. But when they hit, the payout is significant. This works if you're doing enough volume that the expected value plays out over many attempts.
Check the Best/Worst columns together. A trade-up where the worst outcome still breaks even is fundamentally different from one where the worst outcome loses 80% of your cost. The chance-to-profit number alone doesn't capture this — look at the actual downside.
Verify before every purchase. Prices move. Listings sell. A trade-up that was +$15 profit when discovered might be +$3 by the time you verify it. Verification takes seconds and saves you from buying into a trade-up that's no longer worth it.
Use filters to focus. If you have a budget of $50, filter by cost range. If you only want knife trade-ups, use the tier tab. If you're interested in a specific collection, search for it. The less noise in your view, the faster you find actionable opportunities.
For more detailed answers to common questions, check the FAQ page.