VALORANT skin tiers explained: Select, Deluxe, Premium, Exclusive and Ultra
Every VALORANT weapon skin sits in one of five tiers. The tier sets the price, and it broadly sets what the skin does — whether it has an animation, a custom sound, a finisher, or just a new coat of paint.
Here is what each one means, and where the money actually goes.
The five tiers
| Tier | Colour | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Select Edition | Blue | A reskin. New look, stock sounds and animations. |
| Deluxe Edition | Teal | New look plus a custom equip sound and usually a small visual effect. |
| Premium Edition | Pink | Custom animations, sounds, reload and often a finisher. |
| Exclusive Edition | Orange | Reserved for special releases and every melee weapon. |
| Ultra Edition | Gold | The top tier. Full custom everything, plus variants and unique kill banners. |
How many skins exist at each tier
There are 1405 weapon skins in the game. They are not spread evenly:
| Tier | Skins |
|---|---|
| Exclusive Edition | 469 |
| Select Edition | 411 |
| Deluxe Edition | 298 |
| Premium Edition | 163 |
| Ultra Edition | 24 |
Ultra is genuinely rare. Twenty-four skins out of more than fourteen hundred — Elderflame, Glitchpop's top line, Evori Dreamwings, ORA by OneTap. If you own one, you own something roughly two percent of the catalogue can match.
Why Exclusive is the biggest tier
That 469 looks wrong at first glance — how is the "exclusive" tier the most common one?
Two reasons, and neither is what the name suggests:
Every melee skin is Exclusive. All 173 of them. Knives are priced and tiered separately from guns, and they all land here regardless of how elaborate they are.
The VCT team capsules live here too. Every esports team bundle — VCT x Fnatic, VCT x Cloud9, VCT x DRX and dozens more — puts its Classic skin at Exclusive. That is another 146.
Strip those two out and Exclusive holds fewer than 150 actual weapon skins, which is roughly where you would expect it to sit.
So "Exclusive Edition" does not mean rare. It means "priced outside the normal ladder", which is a different thing entirely.
What to actually buy
Select tier is rarely worth it. You are paying for a colour change on a gun you look at from behind. If you like the look, fine — but nothing about how the weapon feels changes.
Deluxe is the value tier. The equip sound and the small effects are most of what people notice, at a fraction of Premium's price. If you want your Vandal to feel different without spending real money seriously, this is where to look.
Premium is where skins start to matter. Custom reload animations and a finisher change what the gun feels like to use across a whole match. This is the tier most of the famous bundles sit in.
Ultra is for one gun you love. Never buy an Ultra for a weapon you rarely pick up. Buy it for the rifle you fire ten thousand rounds with.
Melee is the best purchase in the game, and it is not close. Your knife is on screen every time you run, which is most of the round. A knife skin is visible more than every gun skin you own combined. If you are only ever buying one cosmetic, buy a knife.
A note on variants
Higher-tier skins usually come with chromas — alternative colourways unlocked with Radianite alongside the upgrade levels. A Premium or Ultra skin is really four or five skins, and the variants are often better than the base.
Check the variants before you decide a bundle looks bad. The launch colourway is frequently the weakest one.
- Every skin in the game, searchable by weapon and tier
- Every weapon and what it costs
- Vandal or Phantom: which should you buy?