GuidesOct 27, 20265 min readCS2Sell

FACEIT levels in CS2: Elo ranges, seasons and differences from Premier

FACEIT levels 1 to 10 and their Elo ranges, the Challenger rank, seasons and placements, what FACEIT is, whether it is free and how to start playing CS2 on it.

FACEIT levels, often called FACEIT ranks, run from 1 to 10, and each one is simply a band of Elo, the rating FACEIT keeps for every player. Above level 10 sits Challenger, a badge for the top 1,000. FACEIT is a third-party matchmaking platform for Counter-Strike 2, separate from Valve's own queues, so its levels are tracked apart from your Premier rating and Competitive ranks.

What is FACEIT

FACEIT is an esports platform founded in London in 2012. In 2022 Savvy Games Group, a holding company owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, bought it together with the tournament organiser ESL and merged the two into ESL FACEIT Group. Players may know the name from the FACEIT Major in London, the first Major it organised, in 2018.

For most players, though, FACEIT means matchmaking. You queue for 5v5 matches on FACEIT's servers, under its own anti-cheat, against players of a similar Elo. CS2 arrived on the platform on September 28, 2023, together with a seasonal Elo system and the Challenger rank, introduced at launch for the top 1,000 players in Europe, North America and South America.

FACEIT levels and Elo ranges

FACEIT's support page lists the brackets for CS2. Elo starts at 100 and has no ceiling:

Level	Elo
1	100–500
2	501–750
3	751–900
4	901–1,050
5	1,051–1,200
6	1,201–1,350
7	1,351–1,530
8	1,531–1,750
9	1,751–2,000
10	2,001 and above
Challenger	Top 1,000 players at level 10

The bands aren't even. Levels 3 to 6 are 150 Elo wide each, while levels 8 and 9 stretch to 220 and 250, and level 10 is open-ended. Below level 10 your profile shows a progress bar towards the next level. At level 10 it shows your ranking in your country and region instead, and Challengers see how far they are behind the number one player. Challenger isn't permanent: drop out of the top 1,000 and you're back to the level 10 badge. The top three wear gold, silver and bronze versions.

FACEIT stickers and a Souvenir package from the 2018 London Major, which FACEIT organised

How FACEIT Elo changes

Your Elo moves with wins and losses. FACEIT says the amount you gain or lose is linked to your team's perceived likelihood of winning, so an upset win is worth more than a win you were expected to get. FACEIT Rating, added in Season 8, is a separate performance score that tries to measure how much you changed your team's chance of winning a match.

Your first Elo depends on your Valve history. New players with Prime and enough Premier wins get a starting Elo converted from their most recent Premier season, using a formula FACEIT's data team built. Everyone else starts at 1,000, which is level 4.

FACEIT seasons, soft resets and placements

Since April 2026, each FACEIT season has started with a soft reset and 10 placement matches, during which your Elo is hidden. Season 8 began on April 22, 2026, with what FACEIT later called its heaviest reset, the first to affect every player. Season 9, still running in late October 2026, began on August 5 with a lighter one.

The Season 9 reset looked at your last 50 games: activity, win rate and FACEIT Rating, not only your final Elo. Players with fewer than 20 wins in Season 8 took an extra inactivity penalty, and the top of level 10 was compressed the most. FACEIT's reasoning is that level 10 "has no upper limit", so without resets high Elo slowly becomes a measure of games played rather than skill. Placement games move your Elo more than normal matches, and since Season 9 FACEIT shows how much each one helped or hurt your starting point.

FACEIT vs Premier

	FACEIT	Premier
Run by	ESL FACEIT Group	Valve
Rating	Elo from 100, shown as levels 1–10	CS Rating, a visible number
Rankings	Country and region ranks at level 10, Challenger for the top 1,000	Global and regional leaderboards
Entry	Prime in CS2, ID check for low-hour accounts	Prime and Profile Level 10
Anti-cheat	FACEIT Anti-Cheat client required	Valve's VAC

Valve describes the CS Rating as "a visible measurement of your Counter-Strike performance." Our Premier guide covers its colours and seasons. FACEIT only uses your Premier rating once, to set a new player's starting Elo, with a formula it doesn't publish.

Is FACEIT free

Yes, for the main queue. Standard Matches are FACEIT's default match type, open to free players and subscribers alike. A paid Premium subscription adds stricter queues:

Super Match limits parties to three players and keeps premade parties within 400 Elo, with vote kicks and optional verified-only or veteran-only matching. Free players can be matched into one but can't queue for it.
Premium Match is for subscribers who are both verified and veterans, solo or in a pair, with the same 400 Elo party limit. Each match is worth 20 percent more Elo either way. FACEIT lists it for Europe and North America only.

Free players can try either queue with Access Tokens, one token per match, and can always fall back on the free 5v5 queue.

How to play FACEIT in CS2

Make sure your CS2 account has Prime. FACEIT requires it for every new CS2 registration; our Prime guide explains what Prime includes.
Create a FACEIT account and link your Steam account. Your Steam profile and game details must be public, and one Steam account can be linked to only one FACEIT account.
In FACEIT's game settings, choose Add Game, pick CS2 and click Connect Steam, then approve it on Steam and choose your region. Accounts with few hours in Counter-Strike have to verify their identity first.
Install the FACEIT Anti-Cheat. It runs only on Windows and needs TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, and since October 14, 2026 it accepts Windows 10 only as version 22H2 with Extended Security Updates. Our FACEIT anti-cheat guide walks through the setup.