.32 H&R Magnum Ammo (2026): Prices, What Fits and the +P Question

Last updated October 2026

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.32 H&R Magnum ammo is still made by Federal, Remington, Hornady, Black Hills, DoubleTap, HSM and Buffalo Bore, and our dealers had more than 50 listings for it on October 3, 2026. A box of 20 Federal Champion started at $23.78, and 50-round boxes of HSM hollow points worked out to 86 cents a round.

It’s a small cartridge with a big family. A .32 H&R revolver also fires .32 S&W and .32 S&W Long, and a .327 Federal Magnum revolver fires all three. It never works the other way around.

A lot of what’s written about it gets one number wrong, too. Three of the pages that rank for this round call its pressure limit 21,000 psi. SAAMI’s figure is 23,000 psi, and 21,000 is the old crusher number in a different unit.

This guide covers who still makes .32 H&R Magnum ammo, what it costs per round, what fits which revolver, what +P means on this cartridge and which loads make sense for carry. New to buying online? Our ammo buying guide covers the basics.

.32 H&R Magnum at a Glance

The .32 H&R Magnum is a rimmed revolver cartridge that Federal and Harrington & Richardson brought out in 1984, firing a 60 to 130-grain bullet of .312 inch. It’s a stretched .32 S&W Long with a 1.075-inch case, loaded to 23,000 psi.

.32 H&R Magnum Ammo: The Good and the Bad

Supply is healthy, and the cartridge fits more guns than most people think. The bad news is the box size, and a wrong pressure figure that keeps getting copied.

Table of Contents

What Fits a .32 H&R Magnum, and What Never Does

A .32 H&R Magnum revolver safely fires .32 S&W and .32 S&W Long, and a .327 Federal Magnum revolver fires all three of those plus .32 H&R, by SAAMI’s interchangeability list. It never works the other way, because a longer case won’t fit a shorter chamber.

This is the part people get wrong in a gun shop, so here’s the whole family in one table. The four revolver rounds get longer as you go down, from .605 inch for the .32 S&W to 1.200 inch for the .327.

The yes cells come straight from SAAMI’s interchangeability list. Ruger prints the same thing on its .327 spec sheets: “Also accepts .32 H&R Magnum, .32 S&W Long, and .32 S&W.” SAAMI adds that you should check with the gun’s maker that it functions.

Why a .327 won’t go into a .32 H&R gun

The .327 case is .125 inch longer, so the cylinder won’t close on it. Guns and Ammo put it simply: “you can’t chamber a .327 into a .32 H&R and close the cylinder, which is good.” It’s good because the .327 runs at almost twice the pressure.

The same logic stops a .32 H&R from going into an old .32 S&W Long revolver. DoubleTap says so on its SnakeShot product page: “This ammo will ONLY fit in 32 H&R Magnum and 327 Federal revolvers.”

Can you shoot .32 ACP in a .32 H&R revolver?

Don’t. SAAMI lists .32 ACP as unsafe in a .32 S&W chamber, and no SAAMI list or gun maker we read approves it in a .32 H&R or .327 revolver. Its case and rim are built for a pistol’s magazine, not a revolver’s cylinder.

Lucky Gunner explains the mechanics. The .32 ACP “is semi-rimmed” for autoloaders, and its rim is “.045 inches instead of .055 inches.” That leaves a gap between the primer and the firing pin, so “the firing pin won’t hit the primer hard enough and the round just won’t fire.”

And .32 Long Colt and .32-20?

SAAMI’s unsafe list names one cartridge for .32 H&R chambers, and it’s the .32 Long Colt. It’s an old Colt revolver round you’ll rarely see, but it does turn up in estate boxes.

The .32-20 Winchester is a different case altogether, a small bottleneck rifle round. Cimarron sells dual-cylinder single actions such as the Model P Jr., with one cylinder for .32-20 and one for .32 H&R, and a second cylinder is the only way the two share a gun. Our .32-20 ammo guide covers that cartridge.

Who Makes .32 H&R Magnum Ammo in 2026

Seven makers list .32 H&R Magnum ammo on their own sites: Federal, Remington, Hornady, Black Hills, DoubleTap, HSM and Buffalo Bore. Their loads run from a 60-grain lead-free hollow point at 1,300 fps to a 130-grain hard cast that Buffalo Bore lists at 1,125 fps.

Barrel length moves these numbers a lot, so read that column. Federal tests in a 4-inch vented barrel, Black Hills in a 5.5-inch barrel, and DoubleTap and Buffalo Bore in real revolvers.

Watch the Federal Champion number. Retailer listings still print 1,020 or 1,030 fps for it, but Federal’s own page says 980 fps from a 4-inch vented barrel. Remington’s two loads get swapped in dealer titles too: the WheelGun is the 95-grain lead load and the HTP is the 85-grain hollow point.

Federal also announced an American Eagle 85-grain jacketed soft point, listed at 975 fps in its press release. We checked the maker pages between July and October 2026, Buffalo Bore’s through archived copies of July 2026.

.32 H&R Magnum ballistics

SAAMI’s reference loads run 1,140 fps for an 80-grain bullet, 1,120 for 85 grains and 1,020 for 95, all from a vented test barrel. Hornady’s 80-grain Critical Defense leaves a 4-inch barrel at 1,150 fps and 235 foot-pounds, and it’s still doing 1,039 fps at 50 yards and 963 at 100.

A snub knocks 100 fps or more off any of these, as our range table shows. That’s the honest ballistics picture for a pocket revolver.

What .32 H&R Magnum Ammo Costs in 2026

Prices for .32 H&R Magnum ammo ran from 86 cents a round for HSM hollow points in boxes of 50 to $2.05 a round for Remington HTP at our dealers on October 3, 2026, with Federal Champion from $1.19 a round.

Box size drives the price. Most loads come 20 to a box, and nearly all of them land above a dollar a round. The exception on October 3 was DoubleTap’s 120-grain hard cast at $19.87, or 99 cents a round.

Black Hills and HSM pack 50, and they’re the ones to buy if you shoot a lot.

Each card on this page leads with a dealer we trust, so its headline can sit above the lowest row in the list under it. On October 3 the first card led with Sportsman’s Warehouse at $31.99, with the $23.78 box further down the list.

Three rows in the dealer feeds can fool you. One store lists DoubleTap’s snake shot as “90 gr #9” with no word about shot in the title, and it showed up as the top result for a plain .32 H&R search. Another sells 500-round cases at $524.38 and up, a price that reads like a box until you see the count.

The third is the Remington title swap above. The cards on this page filter the first two out. Our ammo price report tracks the common calibers for comparison.

The Numbers: 23,000 psi, Not 21,000

SAAMI limits the .32 H&R Magnum to a maximum average pressure of 23,000 psi by transducer and 21,000 CUP by the older copper crusher method. Those are two different tests in two different units, and you cannot convert one into the other.

Guns and Ammo, Shooting Times and the summary box on Wikipedia’s page all print 21,000 psi. That’s the crusher figure with the wrong unit on it. The SAAMI standard carries both columns.

Yes, SAAMI lists a higher psi figure for the short .32 S&W than for the .32 S&W Long. That’s how the standard prints it. What matters for a buyer is the step: the .32 H&R runs about 50 percent above the .32 S&W Long, and the .327 runs at almost twice the .32 H&R.

That is why the shorter rounds are safe in the longer chambers. A .32 H&R revolver is built for 23,000 psi, so 15,000 psi ammunition is easy work for it. Europe’s C.I.P. sets the .32 H&R at 1,400 bar, measured its own way, so don’t convert it and set it beside SAAMI’s figure.

What +P Means on a .32 H&R Box

SAAMI has no +P standard for the .32 H&R Magnum, so +P on a .32 H&R box is the maker’s own label. Buffalo Bore is the only maker we found that uses it, and its pages give no pressure figure for those loads.

What Buffalo Bore does give is a gun warning. Its 100-grain hollow point page says the load “is safe to use in all firearms chambered for 32 H&R mag. and 327 Federal Mag., EXCEPT the original H&R revolvers”. The note is dated April 21, 2011, and says those guns “have long been out of production.”

The 130-grain hard cast page is blunter: “Do not use ANY+P ammunition in the original H&R revolvers.” So if your .32 H&R says Harrington & Richardson on the side, stick to standard loads. We’d do the same with a New England Firearms R73, and with any old or lightweight .32.

Buffalo Bore also makes a standard-pressure 100-grain hard cast wadcutter for the Smith & Wesson Ultimate Carry J-frames, and it’s frank about wear: “+P ammo will wear any gun faster than non +P ammo, if all else is equal.” Want more than a .32 H&R gives you? A .327 Federal revolver is the honest answer.

Six-shot J-frames are strong, but Handloader points out that the bolt stop notch sits right over the chamber wall, leaving .022 to .025 inch of steel there. Back in 2000, Gun Tests had two early alloy S&W .32 Magnums balk at ejecting empties, and one’s barrel and shroud worked loose. That’s one more reason we keep +P out of the little guns.

Best .32 H&R Magnum Ammo for Self-Defense

For carry, we’d pick Hornady Critical Defense 80-grain or Federal’s 85-grain Hydra-Shok Deep. Both expand and both stay in a sensible depth range in the gel tests that exist. Hornady’s load went 14 inches with .40-inch expansion through heavy clothing from a 1.9-inch revolver in Lucky Gunner’s test, and Federal’s went about 12 inches in Gun Digest’s.

Two cautions on that table. The tests used different gel and different guns, so compare rows within one test, not across them. And Lucky Gunner notes that the Hornady bullets penetrated only about 10 inches in bare gel, so clothing helps that load.

Lucky Gunner’s own pick surprised us: “I would instead suggest the .32 H&R Magnum LSWC, which offers adequate penetration and significantly less recoil than any .327 Magnum load”. That’s the plain Federal Champion. It doesn’t expand, but it gets deep.

Short barrels cost speed. Guns and Ammo’s tester measured 897 fps from his S&W 432, with its barrel of less than 2 inches, about 100 fps under Federal’s 4-inch figure for the 85-grain hollow point. American Rifleman concluded that either .32 Magnum, “with the right load, should make an adequate self-defense cartridge.” Our best defensive ammo guide covers the bigger calibers.

.32 H&R Magnum vs .327 Federal Magnum

The .327 Federal Magnum is the .32 H&R’s big brother: a case .125 inch longer, loaded to 45,000 psi against 23,000, which Ruger and Federal announced together in November 2007. A .327 revolver fires .32 H&R. The reverse never works.

Gun Digest puts the gap bluntly: “The best .32 H&R Magnum loads generate less than half the kinetic energy of good .327 Federal Magnum loads.” You pay for that in blast and recoil, which is the whole reason the .32 H&R still sells.

Our take: if you own a .327, buy .32 H&R for practice and for anyone in the house who’s recoil-shy. Own a .32 H&R and want more? Sell it and buy the .327. Hotter ammo won’t get you there.

Guns Chambered for .32 H&R Magnum Today

New guns chambered for .32 H&R Magnum in 2026 include the Smith & Wesson 432 and 632 Ultimate Carry, Charter Arms’ Undercoverette and Professional, Heritage’s Rough Rider and Cimarron’s dual-cylinder Model P Jr. Every .327 Federal gun fires it too.

Six shots in a J-frame is the selling point. A .38 Special J-frame holds five, and the 632 squeezes six into the same size frame. That’s why the Ultimate Carry guns exist.

The cheapest way in is the Heritage, which our dealers listed from $205.54. Heritage brought the Rough Rider out in .32 H&R again in 2026, though Gun Tests reviewed a .32 H&R Rough Rider back in 2008, so it isn’t the first one. Our Heritage Rough Rider review covers the .22 version.

Looking used? Ruger made the New Model Single-Six in .32 H&R from 1984 and brought the fixed-sight model back in 2002 on demand, it said, “especially from the fast-growing sport of cowboy action shooting competition.” The SP101 came in .32 H&R too. Our Ruger SP101 review covers the .357 model.

Charter’s .38 Special snub is in our Charter Arms Undercover review, and our best revolvers roundup covers the wider field.

What .32 H&R Magnum Is Good For

The .32 H&R Magnum earns its keep in four jobs: low-recoil defense, small game, snakes and cowboy action shooting. Handloader called it a cartridge with “outstanding accuracy and performance on small game, pests and varmints”, and that’s held up for 40 years.

• Low-recoil defense: American Rifleman’s tester wrote that recoil-sensitive shooters “will likely find the .32 H&R Mag. more pleasant to shoot than most .38 Spl. loads.”
• Small game: Buffalo Bore calls its own hollow point “mostly a small game” load for rabbits, armadillos and coyotes, and a “utility/plinking load”.
• Snakes: DoubleTap SnakeShot pairs #9 shot with a 40-grain hard cast wadcutter, for “birdshot with a predictable spread” out of a revolver.
• Cowboy action: Black Hills loads a 90-grain lead flat point at 750 fps, and the Heritage and Cimarron single actions are built for it.

Does it beat the .38 Special? On Hornady’s own figures it sits between the .380 and the .38. Its .380 load makes 200 foot-pounds, the .32 H&R load 235 and the .38 Special load 249. The .380 and .32 figures come from 4-inch test barrels, the .38 Special figure from a vented test barrel.

The 1980s magazines said the .32 would outrun the .38. Gun Digest’s verdict: “Maybe that’s true on paper, but actual terminal performance testing showed otherwise.”

.32 H&R Magnum Myths vs. the Truth

The worst myth is that a .327 fits a .32 H&R revolver. Here’s that one and the rest.

Our Range Notes: Five Loads in Three .32 H&R Revolvers

We shot five factory loads through a Smith & Wesson 632 Ultimate Carry, a Charter Arms Professional and a Heritage Rough Rider with the 6.5-inch barrel. That was 300 rounds of .32 H&R Magnum ammo over two afternoons, ten-shot strings over a Garmin Xero C1 chronograph.

Groups were the best of three five-shot groups from a rest. The Champion lead load shot the tightest from the Charter, and it was the softest of the five in every gun. From the 632’s short barrel every load gave up 110 to 190 fps against its box figure.

We kept the Buffalo Bore out of the little 632. Buffalo Bore says it fired its +P loads in those guns without trouble, but its own standard-pressure load is the one it built for them, so that’s what we’d carry in one.

And the .32 S&W Long? We ran a box of PPU 98-grain lead round nose through all three guns. It fired fine and shot to the same point at 15 yards. The cylinders needed a scrub afterward, because the shorter cases leave a ring of fouling ahead of the case mouths.

A Short History of the .32 H&R Magnum

Federal and Harrington & Richardson introduced the .32 H&R Magnum in 1984, lengthening the .32 S&W Long case from .920 to 1.075 inch. The first guns were H&R double-action revolvers, the Models 504, 532 and 586, and SAAMI issued the cartridge drawing on September 17, 1984.

Ruger shipped its New Model Single-Six in .32 H&R the same year, by the company’s own serial records. Charter Arms chambered it early in a six-shot Police Undercover. H&R went out of business in 1986, and New England Firearms offered the R73 in .32 H&R from 1988 through 1999.

The family tree goes back much further. The short .32 S&W dates to 1878 and the .32 S&W Long to 1896, and top-break pocket revolvers in .32 S&W were everywhere a century ago. That’s why the old rounds are still loaded and still fit.

The .327 Federal Magnum was announced in November 2007, and SAAMI issued its drawing in February 2008. In between, Ruger, New England Firearms, Charter and Smith & Wesson kept making guns for the .32 H&R. Our 9×18 Makarov ammo guide covers another small round that’s outlived its first guns.

A Note on Reloading

The .32 H&R Magnum takes standard .312-inch bullets, and Handloader praised it for “outstanding accuracy and performance on small game, pests and varmints” in the first place. It’s a rewarding round to load for.

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 .32 H&R Magnum Ammo to Buy

For most owners the .32 H&R Magnum ammo to buy is Federal Champion 95-grain lead for practice, at $1.19 to $1.80 a round on October 3, 2026, or a 50-round box of HSM or Black Hills at 86 cents to $1.15. The gun and the job decide the rest.

• For a 632 or 432 Ultimate Carry: Federal Champion for practice and Hornady Critical Defense or Federal Hydra-Shok Deep to carry.
• For a steel-frame Charter Professional or an SP101: the same loads, or Buffalo Bore’s heavy hard cast if you want depth for the woods. Keep +P out of a lightweight Undercoverette.
• For an old H&R revolver: standard loads only. Buffalo Bore says so itself.
• For a Rough Rider or a cowboy gun: Black Hills Cowboy Action, or .32 S&W Long for even softer shooting.
• For a .327 Federal gun: any of it, plus .32 S&W Long. Check a lever action’s manual before feeding it the short rounds.
• For snakes: DoubleTap SnakeShot, which fits .32 H&R and .327 guns only.
• For anything marked .32 ACP, .32 Long Colt or .327: leave it out of a .32 H&R.

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 ACP ammo guide, the .25 ACP ammo guide and the .38-40 ammo guide.

Lead image: composite based on a photo of a Smith & Wesson revolver its owner describes as a Model 631 in .32 H&R Magnum, by Cdw1952, and a photo of .32 H&R Magnum cartridges by Burmiester, both CC BY-SA 4.0, from Wikimedia Commons. The composite is shared under the same license.

.32 H&R Magnum Ammo FAQ