The Best AR-15 Magazines

The AR-15 isn’t just a rifle anymore. It’s an entire ecosystem. It’s America’s favorite rifle. No other weapon has armed the American public more than the AR-15. I don’t have solid numbers, but I must believe that the AR-15 is the most-produced firearm in the United States. Finding a lighter, more accurate, and easier-to-shoot rifle is tough than the AR. We aren’t even looking at the modular market the gun has. 

The key to keeping your rifle running reliably is finding the right magazine to feed it. It seems simple, but like most things with the AR-15, there are options—tons and tons of options. In fact, dozens of companies produce magazines in tons of different capacities, each with its own special features. Each magazine tries to compete and set itself apart, which can be downright frustrating. 

With that in mind, we’ve gathered the best AR-15 magazines for your AR-15. We’ve focused on the standard STANAG platform and the 5.56 caliber, but most of these magazines will work with .300 Blackout.

How We Chose the Best AR-15 Magazines 

Reliability 

The most important factor we considered was the magazine’s reliability. The magazine has one role: feeding the rifle. It needs to be able to withstand some abuse, exposure to the elements, and temperature changes. We need magazines that can reliably feed multiple types of projectiles and weight into your rifle no matter what. 

We used personal experience, the adoption and fielding by military and police forces, as well as use by professional shooters in the competition world. These factors can lead us to water and all we must do is drink. 

Material 

Modern companies produce AR magazines from polymer and aluminum. Aluminum is the classic standard and is admittedly tough to beat. Polymer has proven itself to be a reliable material, but the polymer matters. Some companies do it better than others, and that’s worth noting. That’s why companies like ProMag and Thermold don’t have a place on this list. 

Ease of Use 

Using a magazine is simple. Load the magazine and put it in the gun. What else is there to consider? Well, there is a little more to it than that. For example, how easy is it to load completely? Can you squeeze in all 30, 40, or 60 rounds? 

Additionally, with that magazine fully loaded, how easy is it to load on a closed bolt? Any Lancer Gen 1 fans will feel the pain. We want a magazine that doesn’t require a ton of input force to load into your rifle. 

We want it to be easy to load and easy to remove. When I hit the magazine release button, I prefer the magazine to drop free without any drama. Magazines that drop free make reloads faster, and reloading fast is always better. 

Cost

AR magazines have gotten cheaper and cheaper. It’s easy to get a combat load’s worth of AR magazines without going broke. However, several magazines still seem exceptionally overpriced, and they don’t offer much for that high price point. We’ve looked for well-made magazines that won’t kill your wallet. We didn’t compromise either; we just left off the Tritium-infused followers.

The Best AR-15 Magazines

Editor’s Choice Magpul PMAG Gen 3		Choice of the United States Military  Proprietary Polymer Blend Works With All STANAG Pattern Rifles	Lowest Price
Best Hybrid Magazine Lancer Gen 2		Hybrid Metal and Polymer Design Easier to Insert Aggressive External Texture	Lowest Price
Best Metal Mags D&H Industries Magazines		Lightest Option Always Drops Free Available in Multiple Calibers	Lowest Price
Best Retro Magazine H&R Waffle Magazine		Retro Clone Correct 20 Round Capacity Affordable	Lowest Price
Best Budget Mags KCI PC Magazines		Polycarbonate Magazine Metal Feed Lips Affordable Price Point	Lowest Price
Best Training Mags ETS Gen 2		Super Cheap  Lightweight Easy to Find	Lowest Price
A Drum That Actually Works Magpul D60		Lever Loaded Drum Can Be Left Loaded 60 Round Capacity	Lowest Price

Best AR-15 Magazines Reviews 

The Magpul Gen 3 PMAG is the current king of AR-15 magazines. Magpul didn’t produce the first polymer magazine, but they were the first ones to make the idea work and work well. Magpul’s magazines are incredibly reliable, durable, and well-made. Over the years, they evolved to work outside of the AR-15 and with various other STANAG platforms. 

Magpul’s PMAGs have been approved and even issued in certain units with the Army and United States Marine Corps. When you see Special Operators with rifles, they are likely using some form of PMAG. While PMAGs are polymer, they’ve proven to be durable and reliable in the world’s worst conditions. These rugged but reliable magazines deal with dirt, heat, cold, and more with ease. 

The Gen 3 series of PMAGs comes with a rugged and highly textured external design. This allows for a consistent grip in all conditions and makes it easy to retrieve the magazine and reload your rifle on the fly. The magazines come with a dot matrix to allow easy marking of magazines, and there are windowed options to quickly confirm your magazine’s capacity. 

The Magpul Gen 3 series has fought its way to the top in a crowded market. It’s because of PMAGs and Magpul that so many polymer magazine options exist, and we trust them wholeheartedly. They are a fantastic option and somehow offer all that reliability and durability at a low price point. 

Magpul PMAG Gen 3 Pros and Cons

The Lancer L5AWM Gen 2 magazines come in a close second for best magazines on the market. These are my personal favorite magazines, and I find them to be the best options for my use. Ultimately, they don’t get the top spot simply because Magpul has been proven with major military forces time and time again. 

What the Lancers do differently than the Magpul magazines is mix polymer with metal to give you the best of both worlds. The magazine body is polymer, but the feed lips are metal. This provides a tougher feed lip design that is less likely to chip, break, or deform. Good feed lips ensure reliable feeding, and that’s always been a plus in my book. 

The Gen 2 versions of the L5AWM are now easier to insert on a closed bolt and rely less on the feed ramps. According to Lancer, inserting them requires 22% less force. I don’t have a way to measure that, but they’re easier to insert. The new magazines meet and exceed DoD standards for drop tests, and I can testify they don’t lose rounds when dropped. 

The Lancer L5AWM Gen mags fix everything I disliked about the original Lancers. They haven’t quite reached all the colors of the rainbow like the O.G. Lancers, but I don’t doubt you’ll have all the colors soon enough. The Lancer L5AWM magazines are an excellent option for your AR-15, especially if you want to be a bit of a contrarian.

Lancer L5AWM Gen 2 Pros and Cons

The current AR magazine market is ruled by polymers. Ever since Magpul made it cool, other companies have jumped on board and created an entire ecosystem of polymer magazines. The classic aluminum magazine hasn’t felt the fell swoop of the guillotine just yet. D&H Industries produces aluminum AR-15 magazines that live up to modern standards. 

D&H Magazines have been used by American and International military and police forces. They are often the choice of manufacturers, who pack D&H magazines with their rifles. The D&H Industries Magazines feature Magpul’s famed anti-tilt followers and are 100% American-made. D&H produces various capacities and has even brought color to the forefront of options. 

The classic aluminum magazine keeps things light. It weighs a little over five ounces unloaded and is one of the lightweight magazines. An ounce doesn’t matter all that much with a single magazine, but a combat load’s worth can help you shed half a pound of weight! 

To help with reliability and durability, the magazines use a tough anodized finish and are heat-treated for maximum durability. It’s easy to think that metal magazines are out of date and ready to be retired, but classic metal magazines still have a lot of life left to live and a lot of service behind their design. 

D&H Industries Magazine Pros and Cons

Speaking of metal magazines, let’s look at a retro option for those Retro AR enthusiasts. Retro ARs are still a hot commodity, and Harrington and Richardson, aka H&R, is leading the charge. With that in mind, they aren’t skimping, and they’ve released a series of retro magazines to fit the pickiest shooter.

If you’re rocking and rolling with a classic AR, like an A1 clone or anything with X in the name, then you want to match that retro look with a retro magazine. The H&R Waffle Magazine delivers a classic 20-round magazine design with the waffle pattern first fielded with the original AR-15. These look and feel like the classic but perform like a modern magazine. 

They provide reliability performance in your retro AR while delivering that old-school straight magazine look. Their waffle-like design isn’t going to give any tactical advantage, and I won’t pretend they do. Ultimately, you’re getting a magazine that works while looking good and retro. It matches your classic, retro AR well and won’t kill your bank account. 

Retro magazine reproductions have come and gone, and they’ve historically been quite pricey. These magazines won’t break the bank and will deliver reliable performance while keeping the look and feel retro AR owners know and love.

H&R Waffle Magazine Pros and Cons

KCI has come a long way in a short period of time. The Korean magazine company went from producing decent AR, AK, and Glock magazines to producing competitive products that are reliable and even innovative. For example, their APC9K magazines are better than the factory B&T Mags. The new PC Magazines are an example of that new spirit that has pushed KCI to the next level. 

PC stands for polycarbonate, which is what most magazines are made from. Polycarbonate is the same material used to make headlight lenses. The PC material delivers a tough, reliable material that resists breaking, cracking and can resist massive temperature changes. It’s tough, certainly tough enough for the AR-15. 

The KCI PC magazines also use a hybrid design with a metal set of feed lips. Unlike the Lancer magazines, the metal feed lips are encased in polymer. The metal feed lips provide the rigidity needed to ensure reliable feeding, and the polycarbonate material provides an additional layer of protection for the feed lips to prevent bending. I have half a dozen of these magazines and have remained impressed with their reliability and design. 

Best yet, they are an affordable magazine. They sell at a very low price point. They perform well above their price and are the best budget choice for a shooter trying to stock up on AR-15 magazines. They still perform at a high level, and you can see that I impressed at their capabilities.

KCI PC Magazines Pros and Cons

I like to save a little money when I can. Training can be rough on magazines and who wants to break a nice windowed PMAG doing reload drills on a concrete range floor? It’s unlikely you’ll break your PMAG, but it’s in the realm of possibility. Instead of putting wear and tear on my good magazines I like cheap training magazines and at around seven dollars a pop the ETS Gen 2 magazines are the perfect training magazine. 

To be clear the Amend2 magazines do offer some decent performance for a seven-dollar magazine. These super cheap magazines will feed reliably, and will hold up to some abuse, but the thin nature of the polymer and the low-price points to a magazine that won’t last in harsh environments and in harsh conditions like a more expensive PMAG. 

They’ll keep feeding your gun reliably at the square range, but I wouldn’t expect them to last through a pre-deployment training cycle. The low price makes them practically disposable for reload training and shooting. These days, you can break them and toss them for less than the price of a cheeseburger. 

Cheap training mags are an excellent tool for dry fire training, live fire training, and similar tasks. I might not trust them with my life, but for a low price point the ETS Gen 2 performs quite well. They might not take abuse well for long, but for seven bucks it’s tough to beat these mags.

ETS Gen 2 AR-15 Magazine Pros and Cons

Last, let’s look at a drum magazine that works. The Magpul D60 series drum holds 60 rounds of 5.56 and was the first drum for the AR-15 to work reliably without needing to be babied and cradled. It took Magpul to design a workable drum that’s easy to load, easy to use, and can even be left loaded, all the while remaining reliable and useful for the average user. 

The D60 is also the same length of your standard AR-15 magazine. This allows you to get low and hug the ground in the prone position. The D60 drums are wider, but still manageable and efficient for a drum magazine. Magpul used the same polymer material they used to build their Gen 3 magazines, and it’s tough and proven to be reliable. 

The magazine loads via a lever that presses down the follower. Press the lever, load a few rounds, and press it again. Rinse and repeat until the drum is fully loaded. It’s not too tough, but it can make you wish for a third hand on occasion. By the time you get to the last ten rounds, you will likely be loading a single round per lever press. 

The Magpul D60 drum provides two magazines worth of ammo for those folks who just really hate the idea of reloading. The downside being the high price compared to just purchasing two magazines. Additionally, it’s not the easiest to load. However, if you want a drum, we finally have one that works. 

Magpul D60 Pros and Cons

AR Mags and You 

Your rifle is only as good as the magazine you use to feed it. Seriously, a good rifle deserves a good magazine. Most failures I see with quality ARs come from poorly made magazines or worn-out magazines. Magazines are largely disposable, so they do wear out, but a good magazine takes a long time to wear out. 

Feed your gun with good magazines, and you’ll keep it running reliably. Good magazines go a long way, and remember, when in doubt, just go to Magpul!