How we compare
What this site is, and is not
A spec-sheet comparison of 53 rifle scopes from 17 brands. There is no test lab, no staff of reviewers and no editor: nobody here has mounted these scopes and shot them, and the site never says otherwise. What it does is put the manufacturers’ published figures side by side, compute the handful of things that follow from them, and say plainly which is which.
Where the numbers come from
Every published specification was read off a manufacturer’s product page or a major retailer’s listing and recorded against that source; each scope’s page names where its figures were checked (34 distinct sources across the catalog). Where the maker publishes a range we show the range; where the maker publishes nothing, the field is blank rather than estimated. Metric figures were converted (metres at 100 m × 3 for feet at 100 yards, grams ÷ 28.35 for ounces). All 53 entries were checked on 2026-09-20.
Specs drift — makers revise a line without changing its name, and retire configurations quietly. Several models we set out to include turned out to be discontinued and were dropped rather than listed from memory. If you spot a figure that no longer matches, it is a bug and we want to know.
Which figures are computed
Three things on every page are derived, not published, and are labelled “estimated” wherever they appear:
- Exit pupil — objective diameter divided by magnification, at the bottom and top of the range.
- Twilight factor — the square root of magnification times objective, at top magnification.
- MOA/MRAD conversions — every click value and travel figure restated in the other unit at 3.438 MOA per milliradian, so scopes in different units compare on one axis.
These are arithmetic on the maker’s numbers. They ignore glass quality, coatings and the erector’s own aperture, so they compare layouts, not scopes. Two 5-25×56 scopes at very different prices get the same exit pupil here, and that is the honest result.
Why there are no star ratings
Because we do not have any we can stand behind. An aggregate rating is a claim about what real owners think, and inventing one — or quietly reprinting a retailer’s — is the most common dishonest thing a comparison site does. The code gates every star on a cited, non-Amazon source; nothing currently clears that gate, so no stars render anywhere, and no page carries rating markup. Sorting falls back to specs.
The “for it / against it” lists
Every scope page has a short list of points for and against it. They were written from the spec sheet — a 36-ounce weight, a fixed 100-yard parallax, a 10-yard close focus — and are headed “on paper” because that is what they are. They are not owner reports; we have not read owner reviews for this catalog, and there is no owner-sentiment section on any page for that reason. The lists are different lengths because scopes have different numbers of things worth saying, and nothing was padded to fill a template.
Prices
The price on each page is a snapshot from the manufacturer’s listed price or a major retailer at our last catalog check, shown with a “~” because it is already out of date. Scope prices move with sales and with rebates, and the same model costs different amounts in different reticles. We never present a price as current and never scrape one live. The four price bands (Budget, Mid, Premium, High-End) are drawn from that snapshot and survive a sale better than the number does.
Why the buy links go where they go
46 of the 53 scopes link to the manufacturer’s own product page — the page the specs were read from. Those are not affiliate links and earn us nothing. We do not yet publish Amazon links, because roughly one in ten plausible-looking Amazon product IDs resolves to the wrong thing — the SFP version of an FFP scope, the MOA version of an MRAD one, a ring set, a bundle — and we only publish a link once we have confirmed what it actually opens. Sending you to the wrong scope is worse than sending you to the maker.
How the lists are ordered
They are not opinions. Every list on the site says the specification it is sorted by — top magnification, weight, price snapshot or elevation travel. Guides are filters over the same catalog, so a guide cannot contain a scope we have not recorded, and any guide that would qualify fewer than three scopes is not published at all. Hub pages need two. Head-to-head pages pair each scope with its nearest same-brand sibling and its nearest rival by top magnification, not with everything.
What we never do
- Take money for placement. Nobody can buy a position in a list here.
- Write owner reviews for products whose owners we have not read.
- Print a rating, a review count or a price we cannot source.
- Estimate a published spec. Blank means the maker did not say.
- Publish a comparison page for a pairing nobody would actually cross-shop.
How this site makes money
Affiliate commission on retailer links, when we have verified links to publish. As an Amazon Associate, scoperanker earns from qualifying purchases. Commissions never affect what appears on a list or in what order — the orderings are computed from specifications, so there is no lever to pull even if we wanted one. Full details in our privacy policy.