CS2 Knife Commands: Hold Any Knife for Free

Why bother

A knife is the most expensive purchase the average player makes, and it is usually decided from a picture on a marketplace. The gap between a picture and the feel in your hands is enormous: models differ in inspect animation, in how much of the frame they fill, in how the finish reads while moving.

The console lets you hold any knife in a private match and turn it over for as long as you like. It does not grant an item to your inventory and affects nothing outside your local game — the commands only work where cheats are enabled, meaning a match against bots or your own map.

Step 1. Enable the console

Step 2. Start a match where commands work

Cheats only switch on in a game you created yourself. A match against bots, a practice session or your own workshop map will do. In official modes the commands will not fire — that is a restriction inside the game itself and cannot be bypassed.

In the console, enter two commands:

sv_cheats 1
mp_drop_knife_enable 1

The first turns on the mode in which every other command works. The second permits dropping your knife — without it the game will not let you part with the current one.

Then drop the knife with your weapon-drop key. Only after that will the game let you take another.

Step 3. Take the knife you want

There are two methods here, and which one fires depends on your game version. Start with the first; if it fails, use the second.

Method one: by name. Enter a give command with the knife class, for example:

give weapon_knife_karambit

The console suggests class names itself: start typing give weapon_knife and look at the autocomplete list. That is the most reliable way to learn the current name, because it reads it straight from your version of the game rather than from an article.

Method two: by code. Some builds accept a numeric code through the subclass creation command. The model codes are:

★ Karambit | Doppler★ Butterfly Knife | Fade★ M9 Bayonet | Marble Fade★ Talon Knife | Doppler★ Skeleton Knife | Crimson Web

When a command does not work

This is the most common situation, and the cause is nearly always one of four things.

• Cheats are not enabled. The sv_cheats 1 command applies to the current match only. Rejoined? Enable it again.
• You are in an official mode. In competitive and public matches the commands are blocked by the game. You need a bot match or your own map.
• The old knife was not dropped. While a knife is in your hands the new one will not appear. You need the command that permits dropping, and the drop action itself.
• The class name changed. Valve renames classes between updates, and articles go stale faster than the game does. Console autocomplete is always more current than any list — type the start of the name and read the suggestion.

Next: seeing the finish, not just the model

The commands give you the model of a knife, not a specific skin. To see a particular finish with the wear and pattern you want, a different mechanism is used — inspect-link preview, which we cover separately.

The practical order when choosing a knife looks like this: first use the console to pick a model that feels right in your hands, then use inspect links to look at finishes on that model, and only then go and compare prices.

Check the float and pattern of a specific listing: