What are Steam trading cards used for? Badges, levels, money
Trading cards are the small pictures that appear in your Steam inventory after you play a game for a while. They are not decoration: they are the currency of Steam profiles. Here is what they are for, from the badge you craft to the level you climb to the cents they sell for.
5 min read · Updated 2026-09-13
What a trading card is
Each game that opted in has a set of cards. About half of them drop from playtime; the other half you get by trading with other players, buying on the Community Market for a few cents, or opening booster packs. Every set also exists in a rarer foil version. Cards are items in your inventory: they can be sold, traded, or consumed to craft a badge.
Badges: what crafting gives you
Collect the full set and you can craft the game's badge. Each craft consumes the cards and gives you 100 Steam XP, a profile background, an emoticon, and sometimes a discount coupon for another game. A badge can be crafted five times, each level with a new design, and the foil set crafts a separate foil badge. People who care about their profile chase the level-5 badges of their favourite games; people who care about XP craft whatever is cheapest on the Market.
Steam level: what XP unlocks
XP adds up to your Steam level, the number on your profile. Levels are cheap at first and get expensive: 100 XP a level up to level 10, 200 a level up to 20, and so on. Each level adds five friend-list slots; every ten levels add a showcase slot on your profile and raise your chance of booster pack drops by 20 %. Nothing in a game depends on your level: it is a profile thing, and a visible one.
Selling cards: what they are worth
Most cards sell for a few cents on the Community Market; cards from small or unusual games, and foil cards, can reach a dollar or more. Steam keeps a fee on each sale (5 % for Steam plus 10 % for the game's publisher, one cent each at minimum), and the money goes to your Steam wallet, never to a bank account. Farming cards from a large library adds up to store credit for the next sale, not to income.
Booster packs and foil cards
Once a game has no card drops left for you, you become eligible for its booster packs: three random cards from the set, granted at random to eligible players when other people craft badges. Your Steam level raises the odds. Foil cards drop rarely in the normal way (about one in a hundred) and more often from boosters; they sell for far more than regular cards.
Getting cards faster
Playtime is the only thing that drops cards, so the shortcut is to let games run without you: on your PC with a desktop idler, or from a hosted service like AFK Hours that farms the games with drops left while your PC is off. How that works, and the rules that block drops (refund window, limited accounts, free-to-play games), is in our guide to idling games for cards.
Quick answers
- Do trading cards expire?
- No. Cards, badges and XP stay on the account for good. Only the card drops of a given game are limited.
- Can I turn cards into real money?
- Only into Steam wallet funds. The Market pays into your wallet, and Steam wallet funds cannot be withdrawn.
- Is crafting badges worth it?
- For XP, a badge costs a few cents per 100 XP if you buy the missing cards, which is the cheapest way to level up. For the look, only your favourite games are worth level 5.
Collect the drops without the PC on
AFK Hours idles your games from its own servers and, on the paid plans, farms every card drop your library still has.