The official matchmaking experience is very mixed, 64 tick, cheaters, and smurf are all annoyances. This will make you consider getting a third-party matchmaking service to improve your matchmaking experience. The two biggest and best are ESEA and Faceit, but which one of them should you get?
Here we will give you a comparison and rating on the most important factors to consider before buying either, to give you a good idea of which one fits you best between ESEA vs Faceit.
Ratings
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Anticheat
Faceit anticheat is the best.
This is against what most people think, but true. Perhaps ESEA was better a couple of years ago. I don’t know, but as for now then, Faceit anti-cheat is the best in the game.
How do I know?
When researching for this article about Faceit vs ESEA I decided to reach out to high-profile hackers and ask which anti-cheat they thought were best.
After talking with them, I learned that there was not a single public cheat that doesn’t get detected on Faceit.
They said that there were expensive private ones that a handful of individuals had access to that Faceit did not detect. But that in general there were nearly impossible to use hacks that Faceit AC did not detect.
(A public cheat is open for everyone for a price, while private ones are secretive, expensive, and only available for a few select people)
This was against what I thought going into it. Everyone online seemed to agree that ESEA had the best anti-cheat. The truth seemed, however, otherwise.
Furthermore, ESEA anti-cheat is also way more intrusive than Faceit anti-cheat. ESEA scans your entire computer, even when you’re not playing, while Faceit only scans files interacting with CS:GO.
Not to say that ESEA anti-cheat is bad, it is still very good. Compared to matchmaking, they are both godlike and, you won’t be playing against many cheaters in either service.
The thing about Faceit anti-cheat you need to know is that Free Faceit will have hackers.
This is because running the AC (anti-cheat) takes a lot of server power.
Thus when playing Free Faceit not everyone needs to run it every game. It is random if you need to use it when you start a game or not.
This allows people to inject the cheats if they don’t need to use the AC in that game. This is not the case on Faceit Premium, there everyone always uses the AC.
Servers
Both services offer 128 tick servers.
I personally have never had any problems with lag on either service. But I’m from Sweden and have very good internet. My experience is, however, that the Faceit servers are slightly worse than ESEA’s.
The biggest problem with Faceit is that on the Free version you have no control over which server you are going to play in as long as you do not become captain.
This leads to you sometimes needing to play on servers in countries that you know you’re going to have bad ping.
On the premium version, you can choose some countries and remove the bad ones when searching, making sure that you will not play on them.
Furthermore, when playing on Faceit, it happened a couple of times that the server began to lag for everyone.
This was not a big problem as it was a premium game, so the admin came instantly and fixed it. Would it, however, have been free Faceit, we would have waited much longer for the admin.
ESEA’s servers seem to work better, and for the most part, I had a better ping on them than the Faceit ones.
On ESEA you can also choose the max ping when you are searching for a game. This will guarantee that you have a good ping in-game.
Here ESEA has the edge. Just make sure they have servers in your country.
Extra Features
The ESEA client is way better than Faceit’s. First of all, you can not use Faceit enhancer on your client but must use the browser for that, and it is a must-have for Faceit.
Furthermore, it is laggy and slow. The ESEA client is simply much better.
ESEA Extra Features
Here are some features that ESEA provides if buy it, some of these are only available if you buy the expensive option.
- Restrat Versus – learn from your mistake with this super easy to use demo watcher.
- Restrat – Watch demos in real-time with your teammates.
- Access to Prefire – A training tool and a fun way of testing your aim.
- NADR – The ultimate grenade training service
- Free .clip each month – You can write .clip in-game to save the round if you got an insane clip.
- Compete in the ESEA league
- Reserved slots on the Fraghack servers
- Allows for +ringer – If someone in your team leaves and gets a ban your friend can take his place in the game.
Faceit Extra Features (Only paid version)
- Nickname change every 3 months
- Access to subscriber-only tournaments
- Ability to join and win prizes in leagues
As you clearly see, ESEA beats Faceit by miles on features, as they provide a lot of extra services.
You could, however, argue how necessary they are. They are mostly just convenient but could be replaced by workshop maps and some extra work.
Nevertheless, they are great services and really bring a lot of extra value for the subscription and, once you get used to having them, they become hard to live without.
Price
| Subscription | Faceit Premium | Faceit CS:GO | ESEA Insider | ESEA Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $11,66/per month | $6,95/per month | $5,83/per month | $14,95/per month |
| 3 Months | $11,66/per month | $6,65/per month | $6,99/per month | $14,32/per month |
| 6 Months | $10,50/per month | $6,33/per month | $5,83/per month | $13,33/per month |
| 12 Months | $8,16/per month | $5,83/per month | $3,89/per month | $12,50/per month |
Faceit is cheaper than ESEA. The lowest possible price is $3,89/per month. While ESEA’s lowest price is $5,83/per month.
Faceit, however, also has Faceit Free, which you can test and see if you like it.
Faceit has generally lower prices than ESEA.
Especially if you buy a year subscription at the time or get the free version only.
Ranking System – ESEA VS Faceit
Faceit ranking system is easy to understand and has logical ranks (1-10).
The same cannot be said about ESEA. Their ranking system begins at D- then D then D+ then C-, etc, up to rank A+. Thereafter, rank G and the last and highest rank is rank S.
Which one has the best ranking system is hard to say. I would personally give the edge to Faceit due to their elo system.
The elo system approached is a tried and tested way of ranking players and works great (it also is used in chess for example).
ESEA’s ranking system is similar but is based on rating instead of elo.
Both ranking systems are fair and I never had any problems ranking up on either of them. Though, it did take a bit longer to rank up on ESEA than Faceit.
Stats
It is easy to track your elo in Faceit Premium. But Faceit Free does not show anything regarding your elo or stats.
There are, however, third-party services that you can check your stats on Faceit if you have Faceit Free.
If you download the extension Faceit Enhancer then Faceit crushes ESEA in terms of tracking and seeing yours as well as others stats and elo.
ESEA’s tracking is, however, deeper in many regards. It shows the best and worst maps as well as weapon stats. You can also reset your stats if you want, which is a nice feature.
Player Base
One important factor to consider before buying either service is to look up how big the player base is where you live. ESEA for, example, is larger in NA while Faceit is larger in the EU.
And if you’re from South Africa, ESEA is basically unplayable because of the small player base. Faceit is better for smaller regions because it has a large player base.
A good idea is to look up and make sure ESEA is even a valid option in your country. Because it might be like some players I read reviews from. Which bought ESEA but couldn’t find a game in over 1 h of search.
Support
To rate support is a hard one, and I can only go for my experience combined with what I found online.
What I can say is that if you are paying for Faceit, their support is excellent, and if you have the free version it’s a bit inconsistent but still mostly good.
ESEA, however, I found to have a bit slower support, but also mostly good.
Based on that research, I found that people were having more problems with ESEA support than with Faceit support.
Summary
To summarize, when comparing ESEA vs Faceit in the ratings Faceit has a small edge in terms of the overall score. But it is not that simple, when choosing a service you need to look at what is important for you when playing.
I would say that if you are from NA, get ESEA, while if you from anywhere else, get Faceit. This is because you will get the best ESEA experience in NA, but in other parts of the world Faceit is simply better due to its bigger player base.
