.25 ACP Ammo (2026): Prices, Best Loads and Real Gel Test Data

Last updated October 2026

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.25 ACP ammo is still made by almost every big ammunition company in 2026, even though hardly anyone builds a new .25 pistol. Our dealers had more than 80 listings on October 3, from PMC, PPU, Aguila, Sellier & Bellot, Magtech, Winchester, CCI, Federal, Fiocchi, Remington, Hornady, Speer and Buffalo Bore, with 50-round boxes of practice ammo starting in the low $20s.

It’s the same cartridge as the .25 Auto and the 6.35 Browning. John Browning designed it for a tiny FN pocket pistol, patented in 1905, and Colt brought it to America in 1908.

The questions that matter are the ones every owner of a Bobcat or an old Baby Browning asks. Will it stop anything, which load goes deepest, and is the .25 really weaker than a .22? Below you’ll find the gel data, the pressure numbers most pages get wrong, what it costs, and the guns that still use it.

.25 ACP at a Glance

The .25 ACP is a small semi-rimmed pistol cartridge that John Browning designed to match a .22 Long Rifle from a short barrel without rimfire’s misfires. It fires a 35 to 60-grain bullet of .251 inch at about 750 to 900 fps, and SAAMI limits it to 25,000 psi.

.25 ACP Ammo: The Good and the Bad

It’s cheap for a vintage round, every big maker still loads it, and it runs in the smallest centerfire pistols ever sold. The catch is power: the bullet is light and slow, and the hollow points barely open.

Table of Contents

.25 ACP, .25 Auto and 6.35 Browning: One Cartridge

.25 ACP, .25 Auto, 25 Automatic and 6.35 Browning are names for one cartridge. SAAMI’s standard calls it 25 Automatic and lists 25 ACP, 25 Auto Colt Pistol and 6.35mm Browning among its other names, and Europe’s C.I.P. files it as 6,35 Browning. So a box of .25 Auto ammo or 6.35 Browning ammo fits a .25 ACP pistol.

The name .25 ACP arrived with Colt. American Rifleman‘s Anthony Vanderlinden explains that the round was known only as 6.35 mm until Colt’s pistol reached the market in 1908. You’ll also see it written 6.35x15SR or 6.35x16SR. Neither SAAMI nor C.I.P. uses those, and the case is about 15.6 millimeters long.

The .25s that are not .25 ACP

SAAMI’s lists name no approved substitute for the 25 Automatic, so the rule is simple: buy the cartridge stamped on the slide. Our .32 ACP ammo guide covers the next size up.

Who Makes .25 ACP Ammo in 2026

At least a dozen makers load .25 ACP in 2026, from budget full metal jacket by PMC, PPU, Aguila, Sellier & Bellot and Magtech to defensive loads by Hornady, Speer, Federal and Buffalo Bore. Lucky Gunner put it well: “there are hardly any handguns still in production chambered for .25 ACP”, yet the ammo never went away.

Read the barrel column before you compare. Hornady, Speer, Magtech and Federal’s American Eagle all rate their loads from a 2-inch barrel, which is close to what a pocket pistol has. Sellier & Bellot uses 2.5 inches, and some makers don’t say.

Federal’s Punch is the newest of the lot, launched in 2024 with a solid bullet instead of a hollow point. Federal’s product team told Shooting Illustrated why: “Even the best .25-caliber hollow-point bullet may not reliably expand”. Some dealers list it as a Punch hollow point. It isn’t: Federal sells it as a jacketed solid.

What .25 ACP Ammo Costs in 2026

Prices for .25 ACP ammo ran from 43 cents a round for PMC Bronze in boxes of 50 to $1.65 a round for Speer Gold Dot at our dealers on October 3, 2026. Full metal jacket from PMC, PPU, Aguila, Sellier & Bellot and Magtech sat between 43 and 65 cents.

Box size sets most of the gap. Practice ammo comes 50 to a box, Hornady packs 25, and Speer, Federal Punch and Buffalo Bore pack 20.

Each card on this page leads with a dealer we trust when one has stock, so the headline can sit above the cheapest row in its list. On October 3 the first card led with PPU at $22.99 from Sportsman’s Guide, while the $21.30 PMC Bronze box in our table sat at a dealer that card doesn’t show.

Watch the search results, too. A plain .25 ACP search pulls in boxes of 25 .45 ACP and .32 Auto, because the 25 matches the round count. The cards on this page filter those out, and our ammo price index tracks the common calibers for comparison. To shop pistols, our price check tool searches every dealer at once.

.25 ACP Ballistics: Pressure, Velocity and Energy

SAAMI’s reference loads for the .25 ACP are a 35-grain bullet at 900 fps, a 45-grain at 805 and a 50-grain at 755, at up to 25,000 psi. SAAMI also lists 18,000 CUP by the older crusher method, and since those are two different tests, you can’t convert one into the other.

SAAMI’s own figures hold a surprise. By its transducer figures, the little .25 runs at a higher pressure than the .32 ACP or the .380.

Europe’s C.I.P. sheet ranks them the other way around: 1,200 bar for the 6,35 Browning against 1,600 for the 7,65 Browning. C.I.P. measures its own way, so don’t set its bar figures beside SAAMI’s psi. Either way, the .25’s energy comes in around 60 to 70 foot-pounds from the makers’ own 2-inch barrels.

SAAMI’s note on the round says revolvers are “not normally chambered for this cartridge”, so there’s no revolver figure. Its test barrel drawing is 2 inches long, about what a Bobcat or a Baby Browning carries.

How Far Does .25 ACP Penetrate? The Gel Test Data

The best published test is Lucky Gunner Labs’ pocket-pistol study. It fired five rounds of each load from a 2.4-inch Beretta 950 Jetfire through four layers of fabric into Clear Ballistics synthetic gel.

The hollow points barely opened, so they behaved like round-nose bullets, and the 50-grain full metal jacket went deepest. Only Critical Defense put all five shots past 11 inches. Lucky Gunner’s writer summed it up: “I would be very reluctant to rely on .25 ACP unless I had no other option.”

Brass Fetcher‘s load-by-load tests, in 10 percent gel from a 2.1-inch pistol, found that none of the hollow points it tried would expand through denim. Federal Punch is too new for either test. In one informal 10 percent gel test through denim, two of four Buffalo Bore 60-grain bullets stopped at 17.5 inches, though three of the four veered after 12.

Best .25 ACP Ammo for Self-Defense

Pick for depth, because expansion isn’t on the table. Our order of preference for a .25 pocket pistol:

• A 50-grain full metal jacket from a big maker, such as Federal American Eagle or Magtech. Fiocchi’s had the deepest average in Lucky Gunner’s lab test, 12.68 inches, American Eagle made 12.3 inches through heavy clothing in a second Lucky Gunner test, and it costs about half as much as the hollow points.
• Federal Punch 45-grain, a jacketed solid built for the job, if it feeds in your pistol.
• Buffalo Bore Heavy 60-grain flat nose for the most energy, 96 foot-pounds on Buffalo Bore’s 2023 page, but read its gun caveat below first.
• Hornady Critical Defense if you want a soft-nosed round. It was the most consistent of the hollow points, and Lucky Gunner’s tester said the Hornady load “would seem to be an ideal pick for this caliber”.

Whatever you choose, run at least a few boxes through your own pistol first. Small .25s are picky about bullet shape, and a flat nose that feeds in one gun can stop another.

Is .25 ACP Good for Self-Defense?

Honestly, it’s the floor. Every load in the best gel test stopped somewhere between 10 and 13 inches, right around the FBI’s 12-inch minimum, and the hollow points barely expanded. Greg Ellifritz’s widely cited tally of shootings, quoted by Lucky Gunner, found that 35 percent of people shot with a .25 were not incapacitated, a worse rate than the .22’s 31 percent.

The case for it is size. A .25 pistol fits where nothing else will, kicks very little, and a tip-up barrel like the Bobcat’s lets weak hands load the chamber without racking the slide. If you can carry anything bigger, look at our best .380 pistols and our best defensive ammo picks first.

.25 ACP vs .22 LR

On paper they’re close. Federal’s own Punch line lists its 45-grain .25 Auto at 68 foot-pounds and its 29-grain .22 LR at 75, and Federal rates the .22 from 2-inch handguns. Brass Fetcher judged commercial .25 full metal jacket “slightly less effective than a 22 LR handgun”.

But the .25’s real advantage is reliability. It’s a centerfire round, so it doesn’t suffer the rimfire misfires that make a .22 a gamble in a carry gun. American Rifleman adds that its .251-inch, 50-grain bullet has “the same sectional density as a 40-gr., .22-cal. bullet”.

.25 ACP vs .32 ACP

The .32 ACP carries about twice the .25’s energy from the same barrel. Hornady rates both Critical Defense loads from a 2-inch test barrel: 63 foot-pounds for the .25 and 133 for the .32. Federal, Remington and Magtech show the same gap on their own pages, though they test the .32 in a longer barrel or don’t say.

If a .32 pocket pistol fits your hand and your pocket, the .32 is the better buy. Beretta’s 30X Tomcat is one, and our look at how the .32 ACP compares covers that round in the same detail.

Is There +P .25 ACP?

No. SAAMI has no +P standard for the .25 ACP, Sellier & Bellot marks its load as not +P, and we found no maker selling a .25 labeled +P. The 22-grain “+P” row on some websites names no maker at all.

Buffalo Bore’s heavy loads carry the most energy of any .25 we found, and Buffalo Bore says they are “within SAAMI pressure specs and can be fired in any all-steel pistol that is in ordinary firing condition”. Note the all-steel part. The Beretta Bobcat has an aluminum alloy frame, so ask Beretta before you feed it a steady diet.

.25 ACP Pistols You Can Buy Today

Few new pistols use the .25 in 2026. Beretta’s site still lists the 21A Bobcat “in .22 LR or .25 ACP”, at 11.5 ounces, and our dealers had the Seecamp LWS-25 new. Most other .25s you’ll find are used.

The Bobcat is the one most owners have. Its lack of an extractor makes ammo choice matter more than usual, so stick with the loads that cycle it reliably in your own testing. Beretta’s newer 20X Bobcat is a .22 LR only.

Semi-rimmed cases can rim-lock in a magazine. Load each round so its rim sits in front of the rim below it, and tap the back of the magazine before you seat it.

Classic .25 ACP Pistols

The .25 armed a century of vest pockets and purses: FN’s 1906, the Colt 1908 Vest Pocket, Walther’s Model 9, the Mauser 1910, the Baby Browning, and later the Beretta 950 Jetfire and the cheap Raven MP-25.

Colt passed on the idea at first, then took up the same Browning prototype that FN used, so neither pistol copied the other. The Baby Browning came later from FN’s own designer, Dieudonne Saive, and American Rifleman notes that Browning had died by then and “was never involved”.

Shoot only standard factory loads in these old pistols, and have a gunsmith check any of them first. Our John Moses Browning page and the classic European pistols roundup cover the guns themselves.

.25 ACP Myths vs. the Truth

The .25 has collected more bar talk than any pocket round. Here’s what the numbers say.

Our Range Notes: Five Loads in Three .25 Pistols

We shot five loads through a Beretta 21A Bobcat, a Seecamp LWS-25 and a Belgian Baby Browning over two sessions, 420 rounds in all, in ten-shot strings over a Garmin Xero C1 Pro chronograph.

Groups were the best of three five-shot groups from a rest. Every load ran within about 50 fps of its box figure from the Bobcat, which tracks, since its 2.4-inch barrel is a little longer than most makers’ 2-inch test barrels.

We had two failures to feed, both with the Buffalo Bore flat nose in the Baby Browning, in 30 rounds. Buffalo Bore’s own notes say the load fails to feed occasionally in the Browning, so we’d keep it out of that gun. Everything else, including the Bobcat with no extractor, ran clean.

Old and Surplus .25 ACP Ammo

Old 6.35 ammo still turns up in European boxes and packets at gun shows, and nobody publishes a reliable list of which old lots are corrosive. Treat any of it as possibly corrosive, clean the gun the same day, and keep it out of a carry gun.

Every current load we found is new production. North American Arms’ manual puts the general rule plainly: never use ammunition above industry pressure standards, and that goes double for an 80-year-old vest pocket pistol.

A Short History of the .25 ACP

John Browning wanted the smallest centerfire round that could use a small pistol primer and still match a .22 from a short barrel. He settled on a 50-grain, .251-inch bullet in a .615-inch case. FN patented its pocket pistol in 1905 and began making it in 1906, and Colt’s Model N followed in 1908.

Through the 20th century the .25 rode in vest pockets, purses and glove boxes on both sides of the Atlantic. The Gun Control Act of 1968 stopped imports of the tiniest European pistols, and American makers kept building .25s. Today the pocket .380 has mostly replaced it. Our C&R guns guide walks through buying the old ones.

A Note on Reloading

The .25 ACP takes .251-inch bullets and very small powder charges, and its short semi-rimmed case is fiddly to handle. With practice ammo under 50 cents a round, few owners find it worth the bench time.

We don’t publish load data on this page. Use a current manual from a bullet or powder maker, and start with our beginner’s guide to reloading if you’re new to it.

Bottom Line: Which .25 ACP Ammo to Buy

For most owners the .25 ACP ammo to buy is a 50-round box of 50-grain full metal jacket from PMC, PPU, Magtech or Federal, at 43 to 84 cents a round on October 3, 2026. It’s the cheapest load and it went deepest in the published gel test.

• For a Beretta Bobcat: 50-grain full metal jacket or Federal Punch, tested in your gun. Critical Defense shot our tightest Bobcat group, 2.4 inches at 7 yards. Ask Beretta before a steady diet of Buffalo Bore.
• For a Seecamp LWS-25: full metal jacket or Critical Defense, after a few boxes to prove the feed.
• For a Baby Browning, Colt 1908 or any old pistol: standard-pressure 50-grain full metal jacket only.
• For the most energy: Buffalo Bore’s 60-grain flat nose, in an all-steel pistol that feeds it.
• For a first carry gun: skip the .25 and look at a pocket .380.

We’ve done the same job for other old calibers: the 8mm Mauser ammo guide, the .30-40 Krag ammo guide, the .32-20 ammo guide, the .303 British ammo guide, the 7.62×25 Tokarev ammo guide, the .44-40 ammo guide, the .45 Colt ammo guide, the 9×18 Makarov ammo guide, the .32 H&R Magnum ammo guide, the .32 ACP ammo guide and the .38-40 ammo guide.

Lead image: composite based on a photo of a Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket in .25 ACP by Self Loader, CC BY 4.0, and a photo of a .25 ACP round by Malis, public domain.

.25 ACP Ammo FAQ