Valve’s Steam Frame has made its first real mark on the PC VR charts. In the October 2026 edition of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the wireless headset now accounts for 5.61 percent of VR headsets seen by Steam, a gain of 5.06 points on September. That puts it fifth in the table, ahead of the Pico 4 and behind only three Meta headsets and Valve’s own Index.
October was the Frame’s first complete month on sale. As PC Gamer put it, “October was the first full month where players could actually use it”.
Valve’s numbers have already moved
The figure is not the one first reported. When PC Gamer covered the survey on 2 November, the Frame was listed at 4.13 percent, up 3.72 points, and sat sixth, 0.37 points behind the Pico 4. The live survey page now shows 5.61 percent, with the Pico 4 at 4.50 percent, so the Frame has moved up a place since that report. Valve has not explained the change on the page.
It would not be the first time the headset’s row has shifted after publication. VR.org found that the Frame was missing from the September table when it first went live and was added a few days later at 0.41 percent, with the unlabelled “Other” row shrinking to match. The September figure shown in Valve’s chart today is 0.55 percent.
The October top ten
As the survey stands at the time of writing, the ten most common VR headsets on Steam are:
- Meta Quest 3: 27.27 percent (+0.36)
- Oculus Quest 2: 22.23 percent (-3.57)
- Meta Quest 3S: 11.04 percent (-0.04)
- Valve Index: 9.90 percent (-0.93)
- Valve Steam Frame: 5.61 percent (+5.06)
- Pico 4: 4.50 percent (-0.26)
- Oculus Rift S: 3.26 percent (-0.14)
- Sony PS VR2: 2.41 percent (+0.10)
- HTC Vive: 2.00 percent (-0.26)
- Windows Mixed Reality: 1.86 percent (-0.02)
The Quest 2 had the worst month of any named headset, while the Frame posted the biggest gain by a wide margin. The Index also slipped by almost a point, leaving the Frame 4.29 points behind Valve’s older headset.
Supply is still the limiting factor
The Frame has not been easy to buy. Valve priced it at $1,059 on 14 September and began sending purchase emails on 18 September, working through a reservation queue rather than opening normal sales. According to PC Gamer, both the 256GB and 1TB models are backordered, so new buyers are being added to a waiting list. That makes the jump more notable, since it reflects headsets that have actually shipped and been plugged into a PC.
The usual caveats apply. The survey is opt in, Valve describes participation as “optional, and anonymous”, and VR users make up only a small slice of the machines it samples. A percentage of VR headsets is not a sales figure, and Valve does not say how a headset is detected. Still, as the first full month of data, it is a clearer read than September’s partial snapshot.
The headset is one piece of a wider hardware story for Valve, and we have already looked at why SteamOS is becoming a real threat to Windows gaming. It also arrives while the company deals with other pressures on its storefront, including its recent decision not to gatekeep Steam against AI slop and clones. The November survey should show whether the Frame can keep closing the gap on Meta.
