Rifle Recoil Chart: Built From SAAMI’s Formula, Inputs Shown

No ammunition maker publishes a recoil figure, so every recoil chart is calculated. This one uses SAAMI’s formula with the inputs shown.

Last updated: September 22, 2026 · Originally published September 10, 2026

No ammunition manufacturer publishes a recoil figure. Not Federal, Hornady, Winchester, Remington, Barnes, CCI, Buffalo Bore or Underwood — I have checked roughly two hundred product pages across five separate rounds of research. So there is no such thing as a recoil chart taken from published maker data. What there is, is a formula published by SAAMI, and a way of using it honestly: state every input, and let you check the arithmetic.

That is what this page does. Every number below can be reproduced from the figures printed beside it.

Quick answers

The formula, as SAAMI publishes it

The recoil formulae are not in the cartridge standards. They are in a separate document called Gun Recoil — Technical, revised 9 July 2018. This is the working form, exactly as printed:

SAAMI states the units requirement plainly: “Firearm weight must be in pounds; ejecta and powder charge in grains; velocity in feet per second. Free recoil energy will then be expressed in foot pounds.”

Every rifle row on this page uses ƒ = 1.75, SAAMI’s stated factor for high-powered rifles. That factor comes with a footnote of its own: SAAMI notes the gas-velocity relationships “were derived from extensive experiments by the British, published in ‘British Text Book of Small Arms’ published in 1929 and confirmed by later work in this country.”

Why a recoil chart is hard to build honestly

Look at the variable list again. W_PC — the propellant charge weight — is required. SAAMI is explicit about why: “Because the propellant gases are extremely difficult to weigh, for purposes of this application, the propellant gas weight will be equated to the powder charge weight.”

There is no alternative form of the equation that drops it. And in SAAMI’s own worked example the charge contributes about eight per cent of the momentum — which, because energy goes as momentum squared, is roughly sixteen per cent of the answer. It is not a term you can quietly leave out.

No factory ammunition maker publishes a charge weight. Not one, for any cartridge. So SAAMI’s formula cannot be evaluated from factory ammunition data at all, and any recoil chart claiming to show factory loads is either using an estimated charge weight without saying so, or using a different formula without saying which.

My answer is to use published handload recipes, where the charge weight is printed, and to show you the recipe on the same line as the result.

Checking the arithmetic before trusting it

SAAMI’s document includes one worked example — a 12 gauge shotgun load. Before computing anything else, I ran that example through my implementation.

Worth being precise about that gap. SAAMI’s printed arithmetic rounds two intermediate values — it writes the leading term as 0.109 and squares 16.65 to 277.3. Carry the full precision and you get 30.17. Use SAAMI’s own rounded figures and you get 30.22. The formula is right and so is my code; the difference is a rounding decision inside SAAMI’s own worked example, and SAAMI itself closes that example by saying the answer is “about 30 ft-lb due to the uncertainty of the exact shot charge weight and velocity.”

The chart

Every input, and every result

This is the table the chart is drawn from. The five middle columns are the inputs; the last three are the answers at three rifle weights. Take any row, put its five inputs into the formula above with ƒ = 1.75, and you will get the numbers on the right.

Two things to hold on to. First, these are maximum published handloads, not factory ammunition — Hodgdon’s maximum column, which sits at the top of the pressure range. Factory ammunition is generally loaded milder, so a factory round of the same cartridge will usually recoil somewhat less than the figure here. Second, the rifle weight matters enormously: moving from a 7-pound rifle to a 9-pound one takes about 22 per cent off every number in the table.

Checking it against the only outside figures that exist

One manufacturer, once, has published recoil figures. Hornady’s 6mm ARC recoil comparison graphic gives three cartridges on a stated 10-pound rifle basis. It is the only external check available on this entire calculation, so I ran it.

The ordering matches Hornady’s exactly — .223 lightest, 6mm ARC in the middle, .308 heaviest — and the magnitudes land within 10 to 18 per cent. For a calculation done from a formula and a load recipe, against a manufacturer’s own published claim, that is a good agreement.

The remaining difference is the point of this whole page. Hornady publishes no bullet weight, no velocity and no charge weight for its three figures. The graphic states only “10 lb. rifle.” So I cannot reproduce its numbers, and neither can anyone else — not because Hornady is wrong, but because the inputs are not on the page. My .308 figure is higher than Hornady’s because I used a maximum handload and Hornady evidently did not; my 6mm ARC figure is lower for the same kind of reason. Change the load, change the answer.

That is the argument for stating every input, and it is why this page does.

What this number is not

SAAMI is unusually direct about the limits of its own formula, and these caveats belong beside every figure above. Quoted from the document:

“It must be noted this approach does not consider any impact on free recoil due to the redirection of propellant gases by attached devices such as muzzle brakes or suppressors. Felt recoil (also referred to as ‘Perceived’ recoil) can also vary by modifying the rate of application of force by devices such as recoil pads or damping devices and the influence of action type.”

So the figures on this page do not account for:

• Muzzle brakes and suppressors as gas-redirecting devices. They still count as mass — SAAMI says firearm weight includes them — but their effect on where the gas goes is outside the formula, and that effect is the main reason people fit them.
• Recoil pads and damping devices, which change how quickly the force arrives rather than how much of it there is.
• Action type. A gas-operated semi-automatic spreads the impulse over a longer period than a bolt gun. The energy is the same; the experience is not.
• Stock fit, shooter size, position and clothing, none of which are physical properties of the cartridge at all.

Free recoil energy is a real, well-defined physical quantity and it is a good way to rank cartridges against each other. It is not a measurement of what your shoulder will report, and nobody publishes one of those.

Why the .50 BMG is not on the chart

A small illustration of how much the rifle-weight input matters. The formula happily returns a figure for the .50 BMG at 8 pounds — around 485 foot-pounds. That number is arithmetically correct and completely meaningless, because no 8-pound .50 BMG rifle exists; the rifles built for it weigh three to four times that.

Rather than print a figure that describes nothing, I have left the cartridge out. The .50 BMG is also, as it happens, not in the SAAMI standard at all — which is a separate surprise, and one I cover elsewhere.

What nobody publishes

• Recoil figures — from any ammunition maker, for any cartridge, with the single exception of Hornady’s three-cartridge graphic. Confirmed across roughly two hundred product pages.
• Powder charge weights on factory ammunition — which is what makes SAAMI’s own formula impossible to apply to factory loads.
• Rifle weights, in one case — Savage publishes no weight for the Axis or the 110 Apex Hunter XP. Ruger, Winchester, Remington, Marlin, Henry and Springfield all do.
• Any felt-recoil scale from any maker or standards body. SAAMI names the concept and declines to quantify it.
• A recoil column in Federal’s or Barnes’s master ballistics charts, which publish nearly everything else.

Where to go next

My rifle caliber chart shows the same cartridges drawn to scale, 270 vs 308 looks at two of them in detail, and 6mm ARC ballistics covers the one cartridge whose maker publishes recoil at all. Hunters choosing a rifle around felt recoil will find field coverage at Popular Outdoorsman.

Sources

• SAAMI, Gun Recoil — Technical, Rev. 7/9/2018 — formulae, variable definitions, muzzle gas velocity factors, worked example and caveats
• ANSI/SAAMI Z299.4-2025 centerfire rifle standard — cartridge identification and the confirmation that no recoil section exists within it
• Hodgdon Reloading Data Center — powder, maximum charge weight, muzzle velocity, pressure, test barrel length and cartridge overall length for every load in the table
• Hornady 6mm ARC recoil comparison graphic, 10-pound rifle basis
• Published rifle weights: Ruger American Rifle Generation II, Winchester Model 70 Featherweight, Remington Model 700 SPS, Marlin Model 336, Henry H9 Classic, Springfield Armory M1A Standard Issue

James Nicholas

NFA Firearms Manufacturer and Professional Gunsmith. The XDMAN has a talent for taking complex firearms subject matter and breaking it down into an easy-to-understand format that all experience levels can relate to. James is an 07/02 NFA Firearms Manufacturer, a Professional Gunsmith with over 20 years of experience, and a Firearms Writer, Photographer and Firearms Expert. Connect with him on Instagram, X, and Facebook as @therealxdman.

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