What is a .vrf file?

A .vrf file is the replay VALORANT records for each match you play. It is saved on your own PC under VALORANT/Saved/Demos, it is usually 40 to 70 MB, and it holds game data rather than video, which is what makes it worth analyzing.

Where VALORANT saves replay files

Replays live in your local app data, not in the game's install folder. On Windows the path is:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\VALORANT\Saved\Demos

Paste that into the address bar of File Explorer and it will expand to something like C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\VALORANT\Saved\Demos. AppData is hidden by default, which is the usual reason people conclude the folder does not exist. Typing the path directly gets around that without changing any folder settings.

What the filenames mean

Each file is named after the match id, a long hyphenated identifier such as b9946017-117f-4a22-9d27-cbd17ab12a93.vrf. That id is the game's own name for the match, so it is the single most useful thing to quote when reporting a problem with a specific game.

The filename carries no date, map or score, which makes a folder of them fairly opaque. The quickest way to tell what a given file is without opening the game is to run it through the .vrf inspector, which reads the header in your browser and tells you the match length and when it was recorded.

How big they are and how long they last

A full competitive match is typically 40 to 70 MB. Longer matches are larger, roughly in proportion to the number of rounds, because the file is a recording of everything that was sent over the network for the whole game.

The important limitation is that the game clears them out. VALORANT keeps only your recent matches and deletes older ones as new ones arrive, so a replay you want to keep needs copying somewhere else, or uploading somewhere that keeps it, before it disappears. If you have ever gone looking for a game from three weeks ago and found it gone, that is why.

What is actually inside a .vrf

This is the part that matters, and it is the reason replay analysis is possible at all. A .vrf is not a video recording. There are no frames in it and no camera. It is the recorded network stream of the match: the same data the game client received while you were playing, which it used to draw the game on your screen.

That stream includes, for every player in the match:

• position and view angle, sampled many times a second
• health, shields and how both changed
• weapon held, and every shot fired
• credits, purchases, and which abilities were bought
• ability casts and where the resulting utility came to rest
• damage, including where a bullet landed and whether it went through a wall
• the round clock, spike plants, defuses and detonations

Because it is the network stream rather than a camera, it covers all ten players rather than just the one whose screen was recorded. Your replay contains what the enemy team was doing while you were doing something else. That is the difference between reviewing your own deaths and actually scouting an opponent.

The format is not documented

Riot does not publish the .vrf format, so nothing can open one out of the box. Underneath, it is Unreal Engine's replay container with a Riot-specific marker at the front, and the contents have to be worked out field by field against real matches.

One practical consequence: replays record which build of the game produced them, and a game patch can move things around inside the file. A tool that has not been checked against a new build can produce confidently wrong numbers. valab checks the build recorded in each file and flags a match from a build it has not verified rather than trusting it.

Can I open a .vrf myself?

Not with anything general-purpose. It is not a video file, so a media player will not touch it, and it is not a readable archive. The two realistic options are to watch it in the Valorant client, which handles recent matches, or to run it through something built to read the format.

If you just want to know whether a particular file is intact and what match it is, the .vrf inspector does that without an account and without uploading anything: it reads the first few hundred bytes of the file inside your own browser.

Sharing a replay

A .vrf is an ordinary file, so it can be copied, zipped and sent like any other. Two things worth knowing before you do. It is large enough that most chat apps will refuse it or compress it, and compressing it in a lossy way will break it. And it contains all ten players' data, so sharing one shares more than your own play.

What to do with one

Read how to watch Valorant replays for getting the match on screen, and how to analyze your own gameplay for making the review worth the time. Or upload one to valab and it comes back as browser playback with the numbers alongside.