What is a CS2 radar?
A CS2 web radar is a second-screen overlay that shows live player positions, utility, and bomb state. Here's how the external radar differs from the in-game minimap.
Last updated: 2026-05-30
A CS2 radar - also called a web radar, external radar, or radar hack - is a browser-rendered map view of a Counter-Strike 2 match. It updates in real time as the match progresses, showing where every player is, what they're holding, where the bomb is, and where smokes and molotovs have landed.
It runs outside the game, usually on a second monitor, a phone, or a tablet. The game itself doesn't render the radar - your browser does, talking to a service that receives the match state from a small client running alongside the game.
How it differs from the in-game minimap
CS2's built-in minimap (top-left HUD) shows:
- Your teammates' current positions
- Enemies only if a teammate has spotted them within the last second or two
- The bomb's location once it's planted
- Limited utility (the C4, your own grenades you've thrown)
A web radar removes those limits. It can show every player, every grenade, every smoke boundary, and every utility drop simultaneously. It can also include details the in-game radar doesn't have - distance, weapon, health, and the bomb carrier.
Why a separate screen
CS2 is competitive at high frame rates and benefits from a clean main display. A second screen keeps the radar large, glanceable, and out of the game's HUD. Most users put it on a phone next to the keyboard, on a small tablet, or on a secondary monitor.
What the radar surface shows
- Map geometry - accurate top-down map outline with callout regions.
- Players - coloured dots or icons with names, weapons, and direction indicators.
- Bomb - separate icon while it's being carried, planted, or being defused.
- Smokes / molotov / decoy / flash - actual area of effect, not just the throw point.
- Latency - how stale the displayed state is, in milliseconds.
Is a CS2 radar a hack or a cheat?
People search for "CS2 radar hack" and "CS2 radar cheat" because a web radar shows information the game intentionally hides - full enemy positions, utility, and bomb state in real time. By that definition it is a cheat: it surfaces game data you would not normally see. The distinction worth knowing is how it does it. A web radar reads match state and renders it on a second screen, outside the game; it does not draw on your main viewport like an in-game wallhack. See wallhack vs radar for the mechanism, and CS2 DMA radar vs Favade for how a software radar differs from a hardware DMA setup. No third-party tool is risk-free, and no one can honestly call a radar "undetected."
How it relates to ESP
A radar is one form of ESP - Extra Sensory Perception, the umbrella term for any system that surfaces game data the player wouldn't normally see. Boxes drawn around enemies through walls are ESP; so is a radar. Favade combines both: the top-down radar surface plus optional ESP-style annotations on the same screen.
How Favade implements it
Read how Favade works for an end-to-end walkthrough - the client publisher, the WebSocket transport layer, and the browser viewer.