Playing CS2 with friends in Chile, Kazakhstan, Nigeria or the Philippines? A private server in Frankfurt or Virginia puts your whole group far from the action. The fix is a server in a city near you. Here is every city we run beyond the main European and North American hubs, and how to pick one.
Why distance decides your ping
Ping is mostly distance. Light in fibre covers about 200 km per millisecond, so every 1,000 km between you and the server adds at least 10 ms to the round trip. Real cable routes are longer than a straight line, so real ping is higher than that.
Frankfurt to São Paulo is about 9,800 km: roughly 100 ms at the very best. Put the server in São Paulo instead and a group in Brazil plays with a fraction of that.
Our cities beyond the main European and North American hubs
- Latin America: Mexico City (Mexico), Bogotá (Colombia), Buenos Aires (Argentina), São Paulo (Brazil), Santiago (Chile)
- Middle East: Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Tel Aviv (Israel), Dubai (United Arab Emirates)
- Africa: Lagos (Nigeria), Cairo (Egypt), Johannesburg (South Africa)
- South Asia: Bangalore (India), Mumbai (India), Delhi (India)
- Southeast Asia: Singapore (Singapore), Bangkok (Thailand), Manila (Philippines), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Jakarta (Indonesia)
- East Asia: Tokyo (Japan), Osaka (Japan), Seoul (South Korea), Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong (Hong Kong)
- Central Asia: Almaty (Kazakhstan), Tashkent (Uzbekistan)
- Turkey and the Caucasus: Istanbul (Türkiye), Baku (Azerbaijan)
- Russia: St Petersburg (Russia), Moscow (Russia), Novosibirsk (Russia)
- Oceania: Sydney (Australia), Melbourne (Australia)
Every city has the same hourly prices as Europe and North America. A few large games are only offered in some cities; the deploy page shows which.
Some of these cities take longer for the first setup, because the game files download over a slower link. The deploy page shows the estimate on each city. It does not change your ping or in-game performance, and your paid time only starts once the server is ready and you join.
Pick the city for your group
- Run the group ping test. Everyone opens the same link and it measures each player to every city. Open the group ping test
- Pick the city where your slowest player still has good ping, not the one closest to whoever hosts.
- Friends across two countries, for example Chile and Argentina, often do best in a city between them or the one with the better routes. The test shows which.
- More on picking a region
Set up the server
- Open the CS2 deploy page and choose your city in the region list.
- Pick a size and how long you want to play, then deploy. The server is ready in about 5 minutes.
- Share the IP and password with your group and connect.