Fortnite Skin Rarity Explained: Every Tier, Every Series, and the 2024 Removal
Fortnite skin rarity is a five-step ladder — Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary — plus eleven series labels, and it has not been visible in the game since update v29.20 in April 2024. It still exists in the data behind every outfit, and it still explains prices, so this catalog files by it. This guide covers what each tier meant, what each series means, the price each tier launched at, and why Epic removed the colours during Chapter 5 Season 2.
The five tiers and what they cost
Rarity in Fortnite was a price band, not a scarcity band. From 2018 until April 2024 an Uncommon outfit cost 800 V-Bucks, a Rare 1,200, an Epic 1,500 and a Legendary 2,000, and Common was never for sale because it contained only defaults. The ladder was never published as a rule by Epic — it was the observed norm across the Item Shop — but it held so consistently that players used the colour to know the price before reading it.
The tier also carried design signals. Uncommon meant a simple recolour or a re-dressed default; Rare meant a single theme with one accessory; Epic meant a full original character; Legendary meant something extra — reactive materials, a built-in emote, progressive styles, or the tier-100 slot of a Battle Pass. Read the full Fortnite skins catalog and the pattern is obvious: 140 Legendaries against 1,315 Epics on 9 September 2026, because "something extra" is rare by definition.
One outfit per tier
CommonC1 · S1
UncommonC1 · S8
RareC1 · S1
EpicC1 · S1
LegendaryC1 · S2The eleven series labels
Series labels replaced rarity for anything made under licence or with a real person, and they are the one part of the system Epic kept in 2024. Six are active: Icon Series for streamers, musicians and athletes; Marvel Series; Gaming Legends Series; Crew Series, one per month of the subscription; Star Wars Series; and DC Series. Five recolour series are effectively closed: Frozen, Lava, Dark, Slurp and Shadow, all re-issues of existing outfits in a themed material, mostly from 2018 to 2020.
A series outfit's price was set by the licence rather than the ladder. Most launched at 1,500 to 2,000 V-Bucks; the largest crossovers went higher, often as bundles. The collab series guide tracks each licence separately.
One outfit per active series
IconC2 · S1
MarvelC2 · S4
DCC2 · S1
GamingC2 · S5
Star WarsC3 · S3
CrewC7 · S4The recolour series
FrozenC1 · S7
DarkC1 · S7
SlurpC2 · S2What v29.20 removed and what it kept
Update v29.20, released in April 2024 during Chapter 5 Season 2, removed the coloured rarity backgrounds and the tier names from cosmetics in the Locker and the Item Shop. Epic's stated reason was that the shop "has evolved significantly to support multiple types of cosmetics and items across games," so it was "retiring the old Battle Royale-inspired system of colors and tags for cosmetic quality." Series labels stayed, and gameplay item rarity — the weapon colours — was untouched.
The practical effect was that the price ladder stopped being visible, and the shop has since priced outfits case by case. The community response was mostly negative: sorting a large locker by rarity had been the only fast filter, and players read the change as a way to loosen prices. Two years on, the tier still lives in the cosmetics API as a legacy field, which is why this catalog can still show it, and why a ribbon on an outfit here tells you where it sat before April 2024, not what it costs today.
How rarity relates to how rare a skin actually is
Rarity never measured scarcity, and the two are frequently opposite. Legendary meant expensive, not hard to find: Raven returns to the shop regularly and half the lobby had Midas in 2020. Meanwhile some of the least-seen outfits in the game are Rare and Uncommon — Renegade Raider and Aerial Assault Trooper were Rare-tier season-shop items in Season 1 and are seldom seen precisely because almost nobody bought them for 1,200 V-Bucks in 2017. If you are looking for a scarcity ranking, this is not that site; other catalogs specialise in it. What the tier tells you is the price and the design ambition at launch.
Three obtaining routes cut across every tier. Battle Pass outfits (pass-locked, any tier from Uncommon to Legendary) never returned before Chapter 5 Season 4 and, per Epic's stated policy as reported, may return after eighteen months from that season onward. Crew outfits are a series of their own and do not return. Promotional outfits — Galaxy from a 2018 Samsung phone, Ikonik and Glow from later Samsung promotions, Honor Guard and Wonder from Honor phones — are Epic and Legendary tier and were never sold at all.
Promotional outfits that were never sold
EpicC1 · S5How the API stores the tier, and why counts differ between sites
The community cosmetics API keeps two fields on every outfit: a rarity value (common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary) and, where one applies, a series value (Icon Series, Marvel Series and so on). For a badged outfit the rarity field is filled with the series name too — an Icon outfit reads "icon" in both — which is why a naive count of the rarity field produces sixteen "tiers" and why some sites list Icon or Marvel as if they were rarities above Legendary. This catalog treats the series as the tier when one exists and the five-step ladder otherwise, giving the 16 labels on the catalog page, where Epic is by far the largest tier.
The other source of disagreement is duplicates. The raw dump lists more outfit entries than there are outfits, including non-player characters, mannequins and level-of-detail copies of the same outfit under a second id; the catalog removes those before counting, which is why its totals run below the figures quoted elsewhere. Neither figure is wrong — they count different things — but only one of them should be called a skin count.
Reading the tier in your own locker
The fastest way to know a skin's legacy tier today is to look it up here or in any community cosmetics database, because the game will not tell you. In your own locker the only remaining signals are indirect: series outfits still show their series badge, and the order of your locker's default sort still loosely follows the old tiers. Fan trackers add "last seen" dates, which measure shop absence rather than tier and answer the separate question of how rare an outfit is.
For what the tiers cost in dollars after the 18 March 2026 bundle change — an Uncommon at 800 V-Bucks is exactly one $8.99 pack now — read the V-Bucks pricing guide. For where the defaults sit at the bottom of the ladder, the default skins guide covers all 26.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Fortnite rarity tiers in order?
Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, then the series labels — Icon, Marvel, DC, Gaming Legends, Star Wars, Crew — and the closed recolour series Frozen, Lava, Dark, Slurp and Shadow. Mythic and Exotic are weapon tiers, not outfit tiers.
How much did each rarity cost?
Uncommon 800 V-Bucks, Rare 1,200, Epic 1,500, Legendary 2,000 — the observed shop norm from 2018 to April 2024, never an Epic-published rule. Series outfits ran 1,500 to 2,000-plus depending on the licence.
Why did Fortnite remove rarity?
In v29.20 (April 2024) Epic said the shop had grown to serve several games and item types and retired the Battle Royale-era colour system as a result. Series labels stayed; weapon rarities were unaffected.
Does a Legendary skin mean it is rare?
No. Legendary meant 2,000 V-Bucks and extra effects, not scarcity. Some of the least-seen outfits are Rare-tier items from 2017, and some Legendaries return to the shop every few months.
Every outfit mentioned here is filed by tier and season in the full Fortnite skins catalog.