The Flip Knife in CS2 and its stablemate the Gut Knife are two of the five knives Valve added with the Arms Deal update in August 2013. They share every case and every finish with the Karambit, yet they look, move and sell very differently from it and from each other. This guide covers what the two have in common and where they part ways.
Two of the 2013 originals
Both knives arrived on August 14, 2013 with the Arms Deal update, next to the Bayonet, Karambit and M9 Bayonet. Like every cosmetic knife, they perform exactly like the default knife; only the model and animations change.
Flip Knife. Valve's in-game description calls it "a Persian-style back-swept blade with an acute point", fragile at the tip but surprisingly durable overall. The Counter-Strike Wiki notes that the Flip was the Terrorists' default knife in early alpha builds of CS:GO, and that the model is based on the Benchmade 860 Bedlam. It also points out a quirk: the blade is longer than the handle, so it would stick out of the handle if the knife were folded.
Gut Knife. The defining feature, in Valve's words, is "the gut hook on the spine of the blade", originally popular for field dressing game and handy for cutting rope, webbing or safety belts. The wiki says it is based on the Buck Knives Alpha Hunter Model 193 with a guthook, and that "CSGO 2013" is written on the blade.
Which cases drop the Flip Knife and Gut Knife
Both appear in the same 16 cases, in three finish lines. Each case's knife slot is shared by the five original models, so a Flip or Gut is one possible result among five.
| Finish line | Cases | Released |
|---|---|---|
| Original (12 finishes plus vanilla) | CS:GO Weapon Case 1 to 3, eSports 2013, eSports 2013 Winter, eSports 2014 Summer, Operation Bravo, Winter Offensive, Operation Phoenix, Operation Vanguard, Revolver | 2013 to 2015 |
| Chroma | Chroma, Chroma 2, Chroma 3 | 2015 to 2016 |
| Gamma | Gamma, Gamma 2 | 2016 |
Since October 2025, five Covert skins can also be traded up into a knife from the collection of one of them. Hotspawn's trade-up guide counts 16 Coverts from the original cases, six from the Chroma cases and four from the Gamma cases that can lead to a Flip or Gut, always in a pool with the Bayonet, Karambit and M9 Bayonet. Our Covert trade-up article explains the rules, and the Karambit guide goes through the history of these 16 cases.
All 25 versions and their float ranges
- 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.
All 25 come in StatTrak versions. The float ranges, from the game's item definitions, are the same on both knives:
| Finish | Float range |
|---|---|
| Fade, Doppler, Gamma Doppler, Marble Fade, Tiger Tooth | 0.00 to 0.08 |
| Slaughter | 0.01 to 0.26 |
| Rust Coat | 0.40 to 1.00 |
| Freehand | 0.00 to 0.48 |
| Damascus Steel, Bright Water | 0.00 to 0.50 |
| Lore | 0.00 to 0.65 |
| Autotronic | 0.00 to 0.85 |
| Case Hardened, Blue Steel, Stained, Black Laminate | 0.00 to 1.00 |
| Crimson Web, Night, Ultraviolet and the camos | 0.06 to 0.80 |
Three Gamma finishes were painted for each model separately. In the item files the Flip's Lore is paint 559 and the Gut's is 560, and Autotronic and Black Laminate also have their own Flip and Gut versions. So a Flip Lore and a Gut Lore share a name but not a texture, and the Finish Catalog number you see when inspecting one tells them apart.
Animations
Neither knife has much in the way of custom animation. Hotspawn calls the Flip's set "pretty bog-standard" and mostly the default one, apart from a pull-out that shows off how sharp the blade is. The Gut uses the default set too, though Hotspawn notes a certain heftiness to it.
Valve has touched both in recent updates. The August 14, 2025 update improved the deploy and quick-inspect animations for every knife, and the August 26, 2025 update adjusted the Flip's animation when you inspect it straight after drawing.
Fire & Ice on the Flip and Gut
The Flip and Gut are two of only four knives, with the Karambit and Bayonet, whose Marble Fade can roll a true Fire & Ice: red and blue on the play side and no yellow. According to the Steam Community's Fire & Ice guide, seed 412 is the top pattern on all four, but the two knives differ sharply in how many seeds qualify.
| Knife | True Fire & Ice seeds | Share of 1,000 | Where yellow first shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flip Knife | 29 | 2.9% | The base of the blade |
| Gut Knife | 71 | 7.1% | The hook |
That makes the Flip the rarest of the four. The guide treats a Flip as a fake Fire & Ice until the yellow passes the button, and a Gut until the yellow spreads beyond the hook. Our Marble Fade article has the full ranking.
How players rate them
Hotspawn's knife tier list from September 2025 puts the Flip in B-tier, calling the shape deadly but saying it is held back by boring animations and a hilt so large that barely half the knife shows the skin. The Gut lands in the entry-level C-tier: "pretty ugly", with plain animations, though Hotspawn concedes that its big blade shows off expensive finishes well. Its trade-up guide goes further, calling the Gut one of the least popular knives in the game.
Dated price lists match that split. Dexerto's July 2024 table put the Flip ninth of the 19 models it listed, at $160 to $2,000, and left the Gut out. In CS:GO, Fragster's January 2023 check of the Steam Community Market had a Field-Tested Safari Mesh Gut Knife among the cheapest knives on sale. Our guide to the cheapest knife in CS2 follows that bottom group into 2026.
Before you buy
Inspect the exact knife and open the information panel. The Finish Catalog number confirms a Doppler phase or which model's Gamma paint you are looking at, and the Pattern Template is the seed to check against a Fire & Ice list. On CS2Sell, Buy can filter both models by Doppler phase, paint seed, fade percentage, float range and StatTrak.
Sources
- Flip Knife — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Gut Knife — Counter-Strike Wiki
- CS2 Knife Animations - All Knives Explained — Hotspawn
- CS2 Knife Tier List - Best CS2 Knives Ranked — Hotspawn
- Knife CS2 Trade-Up Guide: Which Skins Give Which Knives — Hotspawn
- The Complete Fire & Ice Guide — Steam Community
- Counter-Strike 2 Update, August 26, 2025 — Steam News
- items_game.txt — GameTracking-CS2 on GitHub
