The CS:GO ranking system helps match players with people within their skill level in a competitive environment. Being able to grind through the ranks is one of the most satisfying feelings. Of course, not everyone has the same skill level. This is where the CS:GO rank distribution comes in.
Being able to properly place players within ranks and ensure that each rank is adequately populated is what makes the competitive system run. So, let’s take a look at the current rank distribution and what percentage of players are in each rank.
The Current CS:GO Rank Distribution
Online competitive games all have complex ranking systems that help with proper rank distribution. These systems aren’t entirely flawless, but as long as they keep the distribution healthy, players shouldn’t have any problems getting the rank that matches their skill levels.
Riot Games does a great job of this. We can get some pretty realistic values for the Valorant rank distribution through their publicly available API. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about CS:GO.
Valve doesn’t share the profiles and ranks of its players publicly. This is primarily due to safety and privacy concerns, especially since CS:GO skins and items have an economy of their own that can be traded on some sites for real cash.
Unfortunately, this leaves the community having to rely on the data available on CS:GO trackers, services, and estimations for a CS:GO rank distribution. We used a combination of these three factors to create our own rank distribution.
Here is the graph that we’ve come up with:
Note: The information above may not be 100% accurate and are mainly estimates.
According to activeplayer.io, there is an average of 37.480 million monthly CS:GO players. These 37.480 million players are then distributed across the 18 ranks in CS:GO, giving us the graph we have above.
As we can see, most of the players are placed somewhere around Gold, with the peak number of players at Gold Nova III. It comes as no surprise that the smallest group of players belongs to Global Elite.
Starting from Silver I, the graph slowly increases towards the peak of Gold Nova 3. After that, the number of players slowly declines to the smallest group in Global Elite. This represents a very healthy rank distribution, and most players are at their proper ranks.
CS:GO Rank Distribution Breakdown
Now, let’s take a closer look at each rank. Here are the player percentage values for each rank in CS:GO. These are updated as of May 2023.
| Rank | Player Percentage |
| Silver I | 4.05% |
| Silver II | 4.26% |
| Silver III | 4.37% |
| Silver IV | 5.25% |
| Silver Elite | 6.51% |
| Silver Elite Master | 7.76% |
| Gold Nova I | 8.7% |
| Gold Nova II | 8.8% |
| Gold Nova III | 8.97% |
| Gold Nova Master | 8.1% |
| Master Guardian I | 7.51% |
| Master Guardian II | 6.53% |
| Master Guardian Elite | 5.24% |
| Distinguished Master Guardian | 4.13% |
| Legendary Eagle | 3.23% |
| Legendary Eagle Master | 3.2% |
| Supreme Master First Class | 2.63% |
| Global Elite | 0.76% |
Now that we know the exact percentage of players, we can get various estimated values for each rank. There are an estimated 37.480 million monthly players in CS:GO. We can multiply this value by the equivalent percentages for each rank to get a rough estimate of each rank’s player count.
Gold Nova III is the rank with the most players at 8.97%, which is equivalent to about 3.36 million players. It is then closely followed by Gold Nova II, Gold Nova I, and Gold Nova Master at 8.8%, 8.7%, and 8.1%, respectively. This translates to about 3.30 million, 3.26 million, and 3.03 million players.
Global Elite is the rank with the fewest players at only 0.76%. This means that there are only about 285,000 Global Elite ranked players in the world. It really gives you a deeper look at how hard it is to climb to the top.
Supreme Master First Class, Legendary Eagle Master, and Legendary Eagle are the next fewest, with 2.63%, 3.2%, and 3.23%, respectively. This means that there are about 985K, 1.2 million, and 1.21 million players within these ranks.
CS:GO Rank Groups
We can divide the 18 ranks into three different tiers, beginners, average players, and the best of the best. These groupings are based on each rank’s skill level and the colors of the badges of each rank.
The beginners are composed of players from Silver I to Silver Elite Master. There are a total of 32.20% of players within this group or an estimated 12 million players. The players in this group are usually new to the game and don’t really understand how to play CS:GO yet.
The average players range from Gold Nova I to Master Guardian Elite. More than half of players can be found within this group at a whopping 53.85% or about 20.18 million players. If you’ve played CS:GO for a significant amount of time, you’ll likely fall somewhere in this group.
Finally, there’s the best of the best group. This group is composed of the top players in CS:GO, which is why there are so few. An estimated 13.95% of players are here, or just around 5.30 million players.
Conclusion
The current CS:GO rank distribution is in a very healthy state and is doing excellent with placing players within their deserved ranks.
So, in what percentage of players did you fall in 2023’s CS:GO rank distribution? Comment it below.
