Firearms Stack Exchange Archive

Pricing comparison for lead vs lead-free ammunition

In order to elaborate on Gene’s answer to Are there documented performance differences between lead-based and lead-free ammunition? I went looking for some sort of compilation of price comparisons. So far I haven’t been able to come up with much yet. Does anyone know of a good resource for info?

I’m hoping for something that encompasses multiple brands and vendors so that it’s pretty representative. Bar graphs of lead vs lead-free for categories like 12g slug, 12g #4, .30-30, .22LR would be ideal.

Answer 1180

Non-lead bullets compare to premium lead bullets in price. You can find lead bullets that cost more than non-lead and some non-lead bullets are close to the cheaper lead bullets. It is highly dependent on the caliber and type of bullet that you compare.

I’ve also put together an excel file with recent prices for lead and non-lead bullets for several calibers on www.huntingwithnonlead.org.

Answer 1183

Leland's answer is accurate as far as it goes. If you're someone that always buys the most expensive ammunition available, you're not going to see a big difference in price. Based on his data, steel ranges from 7% more to 7% less depending on caliber. It's the other end where you see the big differences, as shown in this graph created from the same data:

price comparison graph

If you're someone who always buys the cheapest ammo you can find (which is a lot more like me--and, I suspect, most of us) the switch to unleaded ammo will cost you an extra 71% on average. For .223 it's only a 16% difference, but all other calibers see an increase of over 50%, topping out at 114% for 30-30.

Then there's the matter of availability. There's a red bar missing from the chart because between four major brands at two retailers there was no steel 45-70 ammo offered. In many other categories there was only one non-lead offering, so the selection of non-lead ammunition seems to be limited.

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