How CTFtime Calculates Team Ratings

CTFtime does not publish a public formula for its team ratings, so the exact math is not something you can reproduce from the site alone. What the site does show is the outcome: a yearly, ordered rating table where each team gets a numeric score, and that score is used to rank teams against each other. If you want to know where a team stands, the rating page is the authoritative view; if you want to know precisely how a score was derived, CTFtime does not expose that.

What the rating page actually shows

The Team rating section lists one table per year, with columns for place, team, country, and rating. For example, the 2026 table begins:

Earlier years follow the same structure with different leaders — r3kapig tops 2025 at 1589.023, kalmarunionen tops 2024 at 1721.038, and so on back through the archive. The country column exists in the layout but is empty in the data shown here, so you should not assume a team's country is always populated.

Two things are worth noticing in that table. First, ratings are not on a fixed 0–1000 scale: values range from roughly 600 into the 1700s across years, so a rating only means something relative to other teams in the same year. Second, the top rating in a year is not stable — 1721.038 in 2024 versus 1231.551 in 2026 — which tells you the scale shifts year to year rather than being an absolute skill measure.

How the rating is used

The rating drives the ordering of the table, so its main function is comparison: it lets you see which teams performed best in a given year and how far apart they are. Because each year has its own table, the intended comparison is within a year, not across years. A team ranked 1st in 2026 and a team ranked 1st in 2024 both hold the top place, but their rating numbers are not directly comparable.

The rating also sits alongside the rest of CTFtime's team features — team pages, member lists, and the ability to create a team — so it functions as the public scoreboard for a team's competitive record.

What determines a team's rating

CTFtime's own pages do not state the inputs to the calculation. Based on how CTF rating systems generally work, a team's score would reflect which events it played and how it placed, with stronger fields and harder events carrying more weight — but that is a general expectation, not something CTFtime documents on the pages available here. Treat any specific claim about event difficulty weighting or opponent strength as unverified unless you find it stated on the site.

Practical takeaways

• To check a team's standing, use the Team rating page and select the year — the table is the source of truth.
• Compare ratings only within the same year's table.
• Do not read the raw number as an absolute skill level; it is a relative ranking value that resets in scale each year.
• If you need the exact methodology, CTFtime does not publish it in the material available, so plan around the published rankings rather than trying to recompute them.