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Profile Rank - The Ultimate Guide Updated 2024 (English, German and other languages)
By 3st
In this guide I am going to show you everything you need to know about the Profile Rank and how you can upgrade it. You will also be able to take a look at all possible Profile Ranks and the 2015-2024 Service Medals.
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What is this all about?
In this guide I am going to show you everything you need to know about the Profile Rank and how you can upgrade it.

You will learn everything you want to know about Profile Ranks and ranking up fast.
What is a Profile Rank?
The Profile Rank was introduced with the Bloodhound Operation Update on May 27th, 2015. It enables the player to grind a rank and earn an insignia to "show off to your friends" as Valve puts it.
It has nothing to do with your Matchmaking Rank. It is based solely on the amount on XP you earned and thereby on the time you invested in playing the game. You cannot rank down on your Profile Rank.

There are 40 Profile Ranks in the game.


Please note: These are the English rank names. If you use an other language the rank names in game may differ.

A Profile Rank of 2 or higher is needed to play competitive matchmaking. Also a Profile Rank of 21 or higher is needed for Prime Account Matchmaking.

Once you reach rank 40 (Global General) you have the option to reset your rank and start again from rank 1. By doing so you’ll receive a Service Medal.


The 2015 Service Medal (© 2015 - 2016 Valve Corporation - Source: http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2015/06/12062 ).

Further questions are answered in the FAQ section of the guide. You will find it below.
How to earn XP and upgrade your Profile Rank
You upgrade your Profile Rank by earning XP. For every 5000 XP you earn you will rank up a level. You will earn XP by playing on official servers.

The amount of XP you earn is depending on your’s or your team's performance:



In a Competitive (or Premier) match, your earned XP is determined by your rounds won. In all other game modes, your earned XP is determined by your score.
These values are multiplied by a certain value.

XP Bonus Boost and Reduced multiplier
Additionally to these gamemode multipliers there are two special multipliers that will influence the XP you earn in the course of a week.

XP Bonus Boost
The Bonus Boost will give you an additional 5000 XP per week. It has two stages: First it quadruples the XP you earn until you have earned a total of 4666 XP (1166 XP + 3500 XP bonus). It then will double the XP you earn until you reached a total of 7667 XP (2667 XP + 5000 XP bonus).

Reduced Multiplier
Once you reached a total of 11166 XP within a week your multiplier will be reduced for the rest of the week. Your XP gain will now get multiplied by 0.175. This means that you will get values like 5.25 XP per round won on competitive instead of the former 30 XP or only your "score x 0.035 XP" (sic!) instead of your "score x 0.2 XP" in deathmatch.


Please note: The multiplier includes the base XP. e.g. when you get 480XP for winning a competitive match you will end up with 480 (base) XP + 480*3 (bonus) XP that add up to at total of 1920 (combined) XP (base XP * 4).

Noob Boost
According to Valve new players will receive an XP boost as they progress through the Recruit and Private ranks.

Missions
During operations, you can furthermore gain extra XP by completing missions. You will find everything else that you need to know about Operation Wildfire in my Guide for Operation Wildfire.

Operation Wildfire also introduced Blitz missions which give you additional XP:
Whenever a Blitz mission is active you will get an additional bonus XP for every round won in competitive match making on the stated operation map.
You will get an additional 10XP per round won. These additional XP will get reduced to 5XP or 1XP per round won after a certain amount of XP is earned.

For more information regarding Blitz missions see the corresponding paragraph in the FAQ section of my Guide for Operation Wildfire.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
If you reset your rank to get a Service Medal, will you have to get to Rank 2 again to play competitive or Rank 21 for Prime Account Matchmaking?
No.

Will you get a second/third/fourth/etc Service Medal once you reached Rank 40 for the second/third/fourth/etc time?
Yes. There was a second 2015 Service Medal as a reward for players who reach rank 40 a second time.


The 2015 Service Medal Level 2 (© 2015 Valve Corporation)

From 2016-2017 there were seven (7) Service Medals available: Grey, Light Blue, Blue, Purple, Pink, Red and Black.

For 2018 Valve abolished the seventh coin. So there are only six (6) Service Medals for 2018: Grey, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink and Red.

















The 2015-2024 Service Medals (© 2015 - 2024 Valve Corporation)

Is it possible to get all service medals of a year?
In 2016 it wasn't possible and my bet is that you won't be able to get them all in this year either.
Even if you saved an uprank from the old year so that you can get the first medal on Januar first you would have to uprank 240 times in the 52 weeks of the year to get them all.

That's next to impossible: You will get 52*11.200XP before the reduced multipler kicks in. That's "only" 582.400XP and will already take you at least about 10 hours a week to achieve. But you will need more than double the amount - 240*5000=1.200.000XP - to reach your goal of 240 upranks!
But since you will only get reduced multiplayer from now on getting these remaining 617.600XP will take about 5000(sic!) hours - an additional ~95 hours a week.

Since operation misson's bonuses aren't reduced in XP you could diminish this time by fulfilling the missions after you run into the reduced multiplier. But the previous operations only gave as much as an extra 20.000XP and 2016 only had one operation (Wildfire).
Even with three operations in one year their bonuses would only add up to total of 60.000XP. So you save less than 500hours.

Conclusion: To get all seven service medals of one year you will have to play at least about 5000 hours actively. I do not think that anyone can achieve this. So if Valve doesnt add another way to earn a lot of XP I consider Service Medals 4 or 5 a great result.

Does the rank reset on New Year's Day?
No. Thus those who failed to get their (second, third, fourth...) Service Medal in the old year will be among the first to get themselves a Service Medal of the new year.

What is the game mode for leveling up the fastest?
I tested it and IMO all game modes enable you to rank up equally fast. e.g. you will get ~500XP for winning a game at competitive mode. A competitive match will take about 45 minutes so that way you get roughly 120XP for each 10 minute played. That's the same amount you get for playing deathmatch and a deathmatch game exactly last 10 minutes. The same goes for the other game modes.

How do I earn a weapon drop by ranking up?
There is only one way to earn weapon drops by ranking up. You can receive one weapon drop per week. You will receive this drop the first time you increase your Rank during the week. Your level progress bar will indicate when you are eligible for an earned weapon.

What happens when I earn enough XP to gain a Rank?
Whenever you gain a Rank, your CS:GO profile Rank will increase and you will receive a new profile icon. Additionally, your first Rank earned each week will reward you with a weapon drop.

Do I need to buy an operation pass in order to get or upgrade my Profile Rank?
No. However, if you buy the current operation you will be able to earn additional XP by fulfilling the operation's missions.
Furthermore, if you have an Operation Bloodhound Access pass, your earned weapon drops will come from one of the exclusive Operation Bloodhound weapon collections: Cobblestone, Cache, Overpass, Gods and Monsters, The Rising Sun, and Chop Shop.

I haven't been earning any XP. What happened?
XP can only be earned on official servers, and is only earned at the end of a match; you will not earn any XP if you leave a match early.

Why is my XP multiplier reduced? (Reduced Multiplier)
As you can see above your multipliers will change depending on the amount of XP you have earned during the running week. Reduced multiplier is the fourth and last multiplier you will experience. It not only means that you don’t get a bonus for the XP you earned but that the amount of XP you earned itself will get reduced. Valve wants to prohibit that players rank up too fast und punish them this way. At the start of a new week you will start with a high XP Bonus Boost again up until you earned a certain amount of XP and your multiplier gets downgraded again.

What is XP Overload status?
As Valve puts it: "When you have earned all of the normal weekly XP and have entered reduced XP gain, you'll get something to show for it—an XP Overload icon will appear next to your name in your profile, the scoreboard, and kill-feed—and you'll have at least one week to show it off. For every week you keep your XP-earning streak alive, your XP Overload icon will upgrade."

So it is an temporary award for reaching >11666xp in a week that will show other players that you have reached the reduced multipier status.

When does a new week start? / When will my I get a weapon drop for ranking up again? / When will I get a XP Bonus Boost again?
The new week always starts Tuesdays at 6:00 o’clock PM Seattle time (PST/PDT). That's Wednesday 2:00-4:00 AM CET depending on daylight saving in both time zones.

Can I earn XP by playing with bots?
You can only earn XP when there is at least one other human player in your server.

When will profile ranks end?
Profile ranks will not end. The only thing that changes is that there are new Service Medals as soon as the year is over.
352 Comments
Omuletul Peng 14 Apr, 2021 @ 3:20am 
+rep Very good guide and well explained
E.X.E.C.U.T.O.R 7 Oct, 2020 @ 7:58am 
+REP Very well and clearly described.
Thumb up.
Looking for TF2 Competitive 15 Aug, 2020 @ 2:54am 
Thx
Yukinon 29 Jul, 2020 @ 4:46pm 
Can I get rank up weapon drops (again) after got service medal?
eeee nais lowpok 1 Mar, 2020 @ 10:29pm 
By the way, you can lose your profile rank by 1 , if you played with a cheater and he got vac - banned