The Butterfly Knife is the only balisong in Counter-Strike 2, and its flipping animations have made it one of the most recognisable items in the game. It arrived in 2014 with Operation Breakout and has since picked up Chroma and Gamma finishes from four later cases. Here is where it drops, how it moves and which finish details are worth checking.
Operation Breakout, July 2014
The Butterfly Knife was introduced on July 1, 2014 with the Operation Breakout update, as the rare special item in the Operation Breakout Weapon Case. It was the second new model after the five 2013 originals, following the Huntsman Knife from May 2014; our knife types guide has the full timeline.
Valve's in-game description calls it "a custom-designed balisong" whose defining feature is "the fan-like opening of a freely pivoting blade", and adds that butterfly knives are outlawed in many countries. Its two handles, which the Counter-Strike Wiki calls the safe handle and the bite handle, swing around the blade as it opens. The wiki says the model appears to be based on the Terry Guinn Gargoyle V2. As with every knife, only the look changes: damage and range match the default knife.
Two draws and three inspects
What sets the Butterfly apart is that its animations vary. According to the Counter-Strike Wiki, it has two draw animations played at random. One simply flicks the knife open, while the other spins it open with an open hand before gripping it.
It also has three inspects, again chosen at random. One flicks the knife forwards and backwards, another spins it around the thumb several times, and the third flicks it forwards and spins it around the thumb once. Each ends with the safe handle pinched between thumb and index finger and the bite handle balanced on the other fingers.
Hotspawn describes the set as some of the most iconic animations in the game, all unique to this knife. Valve has polished them repeatedly in CS2. A January 2025 patch stopped the fingers clipping into the knife during the inspect, an August 26, 2025 update fixed its deploy, and the January 21, 2026 update removed some small interpenetrations in its animations.
Five cases, three finish lines
| Case | Released | Finishes |
|---|---|---|
| Operation Breakout Weapon Case | July 2014 | Original 12 plus vanilla |
| Spectrum Case | March 2017 | Chroma |
| Spectrum 2 Case | September 2017 | Chroma |
| Operation Riptide Case | September 2021 | Gamma |
| Dreams & Nightmares Case | January 2022 | Gamma |
The Breakout case holds only the Butterfly. The four later cases share one knife pool with the Huntsman, Falchion, Shadow Daggers and Bowie, which our guide to those four knives covers. The Counter-Strike Wiki notes that the Dreams & Nightmares Case uses exactly the same special items as the Riptide case, and the game files point both to one list.
Trade-ups follow the same split. Hotspawn's trade-up guide notes that the Breakout case's two Coverts, the M4A1-S | Cyrex and P90 | Asiimov, lead only to Breakout Butterflies, including the vanilla one. Coverts from the Spectrum, Riptide or Dreams & Nightmares cases put the Butterfly in a pool with the other four models. Our Covert trade-up article explains the rules Valve added in October 2025.
The 25 finishes
The full set mirrors the original five knives:
- Original: vanilla, Blue Steel, Boreal Forest, Case Hardened, Crimson Web, Fade, Forest DDPAT, Night, Safari Mesh, Scorched, Slaughter, Stained, Urban Masked.
- Chroma: Damascus Steel, Doppler, Marble Fade, Rust Coat, Tiger Tooth, Ultraviolet.
- Gamma: Autotronic, Black Laminate, Bright Water, Freehand, Gamma Doppler, Lore.
Every one exists in StatTrak, including the vanilla knife. Doppler and Gamma Doppler come in phases, which our Doppler phases guide explains, and Fade copies are graded by fade percentage, covered in the fade guide.
Finish quirks on the Butterfly
Lore runs to 1.00. In the game's item definitions, Lore on most knives is capped at 0.65, but the Butterfly version, like the Bowie and Shadow Daggers versions, spans the full 0.00 to 1.00. The Counter-Strike Wiki flags the Butterfly Lore's wider range too. A Battle-Scarred Butterfly Lore can therefore be far more worn than a Battle-Scarred Karambit Lore.
Its own Gamma artwork. Lore, Autotronic and Black Laminate are separate paints for each model in the game files, so these three finishes were drawn for the Butterfly's shape rather than copied from the 2013 knives.
No Fire & Ice. The Steam Community's Fire & Ice guide lists the Butterfly among the knives whose Marble Fade cannot form the prized red-and-blue layout. Only the Karambit, Bayonet, Flip and Gut can.
Tight and wide windows. Doppler, Gamma Doppler, Fade, Marble Fade and Tiger Tooth stop at 0.08, so they exist only in Factory New and Minimal Wear. Slaughter runs from 0.01 to 0.26, Freehand to 0.48, Damascus Steel and Bright Water to 0.50 and Autotronic to 0.85. Rust Coat starts at 0.40, so it only exists in Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred.
Before you buy
- Check the exact copy. The information panel in game shows the Finish Catalog number for a Doppler phase and the Pattern Template, which is the seed.
- Read the wear against the range. A Field-Tested Lore and a Field-Tested Autotronic share a label, but Lore stops at 0.65 on most knives and runs to 1.00 on the Butterfly, so compare actual floats.
- Know where it came from. If you plan a trade-up, the case behind each Covert decides whether the Butterfly is the only possible knife or one of five.
On CS2Sell, the weapon filter on Buy narrows listings to the Butterfly Knife, and the phase, fade, float and paint seed filters narrow them further.
Sources
- Butterfly Knife — Counter-Strike Wiki
- CS2 Knife Animations - All Knives Explained — Hotspawn
- Dreams & Nightmares Case — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Knife CS2 Trade-Up Guide: Which Skins Give Which Knives — Hotspawn
- The Complete Fire & Ice Guide — Steam Community
- items_game.txt — GameTracking-CS2 on GitHub
- Counter-Strike 2 Update, August 26, 2025 — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Counter-Strike 2 Update, January 21, 2026 — Counter-Strike 2 news
