Escape from Tarkov’s Prestige ladder is proving to be a very steep climb

Escape from Tarkov introduced its Prestige system in 2024, giving players a way to push past the usual grind, reset their progress, and start another run with some carryover rewards. Each time a player earns a new Prestige level, they unlock exclusive items, keep their stats, and gain special customization options for their character and Hideout. In other words, the game looked at the word “repetition” and decided to make it a feature.

Battlestate Games studio head Nikita Buyanov recently shared fresh numbers on social media showing just how rare the highest Prestige tiers are.

The numbers fall off fast

According to Buyanov, just over 40,000 players worldwide have reached at least one Prestige level. That already represents a fairly committed slice of the player base, since getting there requires players to hit level 55, unlock Kappa, max out a couple of skills, and finish a specific questline.

From there, the population drops sharply.

Buyanov said that, as of his post:

  • 24,502 players had reached Prestige 1
  • 8,946 players had reached Prestige 2
  • The numbers keep falling from there through each level
  • Only 593 players had reached Prestige 6, the current maximum

Prestige levels were added in December 2024, and they persist through wipes, which means players do not lose them when the game resets. That makes the final count even more telling, since reaching the top tier means clearing the same demanding requirements six separate times.

Battlestate has said it wants to expand the system to ten Prestige levels eventually, but for now, six is as far as it goes. So the current top rung is less a casual milestone and more a sign that someone has spent an impressive amount of time making Tarkov hurt in exactly the intended way.

A striking contrast with the base game finishers

The Prestige totals also stand out next to another recent Battlestate figure. At the start of March, the studio said more than 33,000 players had completed Escape from Tarkov’s base story. That story arrived with the game’s 1.0 release in November 2025, a launch widely described as the most significant moment in the game’s ten-year history.

For now, the message is clear: plenty of players have finished Tarkov’s main story, but reaching the highest Prestige tier is still an exceptionally small club.