MOA vs MRAD: which turret unit should you choose?
Updated 2026-09-20
Neither unit is more precise. A 0.1 MRAD click moves the point of impact 0.36 inches at 100 yards; a ¼ MOA click moves it 0.26 inches. Both are finer than anyone shoots. Choose the unit your reticle, your ballistic app and the people you shoot with already use — and never mix them. An MOA reticle over MRAD turrets means converting on every correction, and that is where misses come from.
What the units are
Both are angles. A minute of angle is one sixtieth of a degree, which works out to 1.047 inches at 100 yards — close enough to an inch that generations of hunters have treated it as one, and far enough from it that the error stacks up to almost half an inch at 1,000. A milliradian is one thousandth of a radian: 3.6 inches at 100 yards, 10 centimetres at 100 metres. One MRAD is 3.438 MOA. Every conversion on this site uses that figure.
The click question
MOA scopes almost always click in quarters; MRAD scopes in tenths. A tenth of a mil is a coarser click than a quarter minute — 0.36 inches versus 0.26 at 100 yards — and it does not matter, because a rifle that shoots half-MOA groups cannot tell the difference. What does matter is that MRAD turrets count in tens: ten clicks per mil, marked in decimals, which is easier to read under stress than counting quarters.
Why precision shooting went MRAD
The maths is decimal. A ranging formula in mils has no fractions; a correction of 1.3 mils is thirteen clicks, and a reticle marked in tenths reads like a ruler. Match shooters and the military settled on it for that reason, and the ballistic apps followed. If you will shoot with other people at distance, being on the same unit as them is worth more than any argument about resolution.
Why MOA persists on hunting scopes
Hunters think in inches and yards, and a quarter-MOA click is a quarter-inch at 100 yards near enough. A 3-9×40 with capped turrets that get set once and left alone gains nothing from mils. Most hunting scopes ship in MOA and most of their owners never dial them, which is fine — the unit only matters when you use it.
The one rule
Match the reticle to the turrets. A mil reticle over mil turrets, or an MOA reticle over MOA turrets. Some makers still sell an MOA turret under a mil-hash reticle; avoid it. The second rule is nearly as important: whichever unit you pick, know what one click is in inches at the distances you shoot, because the number on the box is an angle, not a distance.