Honest math: what ammo costs per round, what a range day really runs, what a year of your habit adds up to - and the one-multiplication system for tracking it, because your round count is your spend tracker.
The short answer
Ammo runs about $0.06 - $0.10 per round for .22 LR, $0.20 - $0.30 for 9mm, $0.35 - $0.55 for 5.56 or .45, and $0.70 - $1.10 for .308. A typical 150-round 9mm range day lands around $55 - $75 all-in with fees. To track your spend, multiply rounds fired × cost per round - your round count is your budget.
Ballpark 2026 US retail for common range ammo, cheapest to priciest: .22 LR $0.06 - $0.10, 9mm $0.20 - $0.30, .380 and 12ga birdshot $0.30 - $0.45, .45 ACP and 5.56 $0.35 - $0.55, and .308 $0.70 - $1.10. Defensive JHP runs $0.75 - $1.50 in any caliber. Full table below.
| Caliber | Per round | Per 100 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| .22 LR | $0.06 - $0.10 | $6 - $10 | The cheapest trigger time in shooting. This is why a .22 trainer pays for itself. |
| 9mm (FMJ range ammo) | $0.20 - $0.30 | $20 - $30 | The volume king - bulk 1,000-round cases sit at the low end of the range. |
| .380 ACP | $0.30 - $0.45 | $30 - $45 | Less powder than 9mm but lower volume keeps the price higher. Pocket guns aren’t cheap to feed. |
| .45 ACP | $0.35 - $0.55 | $35 - $55 | Big bullets cost big-bullet money. Roughly double 9mm for the same range session. |
| 5.56 / .223 (FMJ) | $0.35 - $0.55 | $35 - $55 | Bulk steel-cased .223 undercuts brass; match ammo runs several times this. |
| .308 Win | $0.70 - $1.10 | $70 - $110 | Full-power rifle rounds change the budget conversation - and match loads go far higher. |
| 12 ga (birdshot) | $0.30 - $0.45 | $30 - $45 | Clays are the cheap end of shotgunning; buckshot and slugs cost 3 - 5× more per shell. |
| Defensive JHP (any caliber) | $0.75 - $1.50 | $75 - $150 | Premium hollow points are priced like insurance. Practice with FMJ, verify function with your carry load. |
Ballpark 2026 US retail for common range ammo, bought smart (bulk where available). Prices swing with the market - sometimes fast - so treat these as planning numbers, not quotes.
Ammo is the headline, but the receipt has more lines: a lane or entry fee (commonly $15 - $30 at indoor ranges), targets ($1 - 3), maybe eye/ear rental the first time. A typical session - 150 rounds of 9mm, one lane hour, a couple of targets - lands around $55 - $75 all-in. The same session with a .22 is closer to $35. The same session with .308 clears $130.
That per-session number is worth knowing precisely because it varies this much by gun. Which brings up the yearly picture:
One range trip a month, 100 rounds of 9mm plus a lane fee: about $25 of ammo and $20 - 30 at the counter per visit. Cheap as hobbies go - until you add a second caliber or start doubling round counts.
Two trips a month at 150 rounds each is 3,600 rounds a year. In 9mm that’s $800 - $1,000 of ammo alone; add range fees and the occasional box of rifle or defensive ammo and you clear a grand without noticing. This is the tier where tracking starts paying for itself.
A match a month plus weekly practice runs 10,000+ rounds a year. Even at bulk 9mm prices that’s $2,000 - $3,000 in ammo before match fees, gear, and travel. Nobody at this volume guesses their costs - they know, because the numbers drive their training plan.
You don’t need to keep receipts or budget apps. Shooting costs reduce to one equation: rounds fired × cost per round. You already know (or can look up) what you pay per round for each caliber. The only number you can’t reconstruct after the fact is how many rounds you actually fired - that has to be logged when it happens.
So the system is: log every session - date, firearm, rounds, ammo - and keep one per-round price per caliber. Monthly spend, cost per gun, cost of a match season: all of it falls out of the log. Our free range log template has the columns ready, including ammo - and if you’re new to logging, how to track rounds fired covers the habit itself.
Shots Fired handles the logging half automatically: sessions take seconds to record, and every firearm keeps a running round count - on your phone, with no account and no cloud. Your spending data is nobody’s business but yours; that’s not an accident, it’s the architecture.
Bulk 1,000-round cases routinely beat 50-round retail boxes by 20 - 30% per round. The catch: you have to know your burn rate to know what to stock - which is exactly what a round log tells you.
A .22 LR pistol or conversion kit turns $30 range sessions into $8 ones for the fundamentals - sights, trigger, follow-through. Many serious shooters run 2 - 3 rimfire rounds for every centerfire round.
Draws, trigger control, reloads, and transitions cost nothing to practice at home. A structured dry fire habit is the single biggest ammo-budget lever there is - our dry fire tracking guide covers how to build one.
At $20 - 30 per lane visit, a $200 - 400 annual membership breaks even around one trip a month - and removes the per-visit friction that keeps people from shooting more. Run your last six months of visits against the math.
Once you know each firearm’s per-round cost, decisions get obvious: which gun to bring for volume work, when bulk buying is worth it, what a match season actually costs. It’s one multiplication - if you have the round counts.
At typical 2026 US retail, bulk 9mm FMJ runs roughly $0.20 - $0.30 per round, so 100 rounds costs about $20 - $30 in ammo. Add a range or lane fee - commonly $15 - $30 - and a normal 100-round session lands around $40 - $60 all-in.
It scales with volume more than anything else. A monthly 100-round 9mm habit runs a few hundred dollars a year - comparable to golf or skiing day passes. Competition-level volume runs into the thousands. The shooters who control costs are the ones who actually know their round counts.
.22 LR, by a wide margin - commonly $0.06 - $0.10 per round versus $0.20+ for 9mm, the cheapest centerfire. That gap is the entire argument for a rimfire trainer: the fundamentals transfer, and the practice costs a third as much.
For 9mm, usually not much - bulk factory ammo is cheap enough that reloading mostly pays in volume or precision calibers like .308 and 6.5 Creedmoor, where components can halve the per-round cost. Count your time and press setup too, and know your actual volume before buying gear.
The simple method: track rounds fired per session (which a range log already does), then multiply by your per-round cost for that caliber. No receipts to keep - your round count becomes your spend tracker. A per-firearm round total plus one price per caliber gets you a spend estimate any time you want it.
Shots Fired tracks the hard half: rounds fired per session, per firearm, with running totals - stored entirely on your phone, no account. Multiply any firearm’s round count by your per-round price and you have your spend. The logging is the part you can’t reconstruct later; the multiplication takes ten seconds.
Free to start - log sessions in seconds, know every firearm’s count. No account. No cloud.
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