.45 Colt Ammo (2026): Who Makes It, What It Costs and What’s Safe in Your Gun

Last updated October 2026

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Yes, .45 Colt ammo is easy to find. More than 20 brands had .45 Colt ammo at our dealers when we checked on October 2, 2026, and our price cards showed 50-round boxes as low as $39.99.

That’s 80 cents a round. And .45 Colt and .45 Long Colt are the same cartridge, so a box of 45 Long Colt ammo fits any gun marked .45 Colt.

The trap with .45 Colt ammo is power. Everything from a 725 fps cowboy load to a 325-grain bear load at 1,325 fps is sold under one name, and every one of them will chamber in every .45 Colt gun. Only the mild end has an industry standard.

This guide covers who makes .45 Colt ammo, what it costs per round, which loads are safe in which gun, and what +P means on the box. New to buying online? Our ammo buying guide covers the basics.

.45 Colt at a Glance

The .45 Colt is a straight, rimmed revolver cartridge designed in 1872, first chambered in the Colt Single Action Army in 1873 and limited by SAAMI to 14,000 psi. That’s less than half of what a .44 Magnum runs.

.45 Colt Ammo: The Good and the Bad

More than 20 brands had new .45 Colt ammo at our dealers in October 2026, from $39.99 for a box of 50, and a standard load suits any sound gun made for smokeless powder. The bad news is how little the label tells you about power.

Table of Contents

Who Makes .45 Colt Ammo in 2026

Fifteen makers listed .45 Colt ammo on their own sites on October 2, 2026, from Winchester, Hornady, Federal and Remington to Buffalo Bore, Underwood and DoubleTap. Their loads run from 705 fps to 1,500 fps under one name.

So the table sorts every load by level. Standard means an ordinary load inside the industry limit. Heavy standard means a faster load the maker still calls standard pressure. And +P is the maker’s own label for a load above that limit.

Barrel length differs by maker, so read the barrel column before you compare. Hornady tests its cowboy load in a 4.75-inch vented barrel and its Critical Defense load in a 3-inch one, while Magtech uses 4 inches. Winchester doesn’t state a barrel at all.

Bullet weight is the other thing to read: most standard loads carry a 250 or 255-grain bullet, and the +P loads in the table run from 250 to 335 grains. Remington’s Performance WheelGun line adds a 225-grain lead semi-wadcutter at 830 fps and a 250-grain lead round nose at 750 fps.

Who makes 45 Long Colt ammo?

The same companies, because it’s the same round. Sellier & Bellot lists three loads: a 250-grain lead flat nose, a 230-grain full metal jacket and a 230-grain jacketed hollow point. Cor-Bon and Garrett list loads too, and Starline sells new brass.

We found no current product page for a Speer Gold Dot or a Sig Sauer load, and neither is in our catalog.

One group of boxes isn’t bullets at all. CCI’s Pest Control, Big 4 and HEVI-Bismuth boxes at our dealers are shotshells, ten to a box, for snakes and pests. They share the shelf and the name, so read past the caliber before you click.

What .45 Colt Ammo Costs in 2026

Prices for .45 Colt ammo at our dealers ran from $0.80 a round for lead loads in boxes of 50 to $3.20 a round for Underwood’s 135-grain solid on October 2, 2026, with Hornady’s boxes of 20 from $1.32 a round.

Prices are from the dealers in our catalog that day. The live cards lead with a dealer we trust, so a card’s headline price can sit above the lowest row in its list. Prices move, and so does availability.

Watch the box size. Sort any dealer’s .45 Colt page by price and the top rows are 20-round boxes at about $22 to $27. They’re the cheapest boxes and far from the cheapest rounds, at $1.11 to $1.35 each against 80 cents in a box of 50.

That’s why our headline card shows 50-round boxes only. The cheapest one that day was a 250-grain load from Scorpion, a smaller brand we haven’t shot, with Winchester a dollar behind it and Magtech’s cowboy load at $42.99.

The cheapest rows in a raw search aren’t ammunition at all. Plastic ammo boxes marked 45 LC sell for a couple of dollars, and bare bullets and empty brass sit in the same results. Our cards filter those out.

Is 45 Colt ammo hard to find? No. This is a deep shelf, with about 300 listings in our catalog. For comparison, our .44-40 ammo guide found eight makers and a floor of 84 cents a round, and our ammo price report tracks the common calibers.

45 Colt +P Ammo and Standard Loads: What’s Safe in Your Gun

Standard .45 Colt ammo, loaded to SAAMI’s 14,000 psi limit, is what every sound .45 Colt gun made for smokeless powder is built to fire. 45 Colt +P ammo is different: each ammunition maker names the guns it approves, and the lists are short.

Find your gun in the table. The last column reports what the ammunition makers print. No gun maker’s manual we read approves a .45 Colt +P load.

Notice what’s missing. No row says a gun maker approves +P. Handloader’s Brian Pearce writes that the gun makers “will not recommend any .45 Colt +P loads for their guns,” and Ruger’s manuals bear him out.

Ruger’s New Vaquero manual never uses the term. It says “45 Colt is also called 45 Long Colt” and tells owners, “Use only new, factory ammunition of the correct caliber.” The Redhawk manual asks for cartridges made to U.S. industry standards.

How to tell which Ruger you have

Two different Rugers carry each famous name, and the makers’ +P lists turn on which one you own. Buffalo Bore gives a test you can do with calipers: a large-frame cylinder measures 1.732 inches across and a small-frame one 1.680.

• Vaquero: the original, made from 1993 to 2005, sits on the .44 Magnum size frame. The New Vaquero that replaced it is smaller, and Ruger marks that name on the frame.
• Blackhawk: the standard .45 Colt Blackhawk is the large frame. The flattop version, sold from about 2010, is built on the smaller .357 size frame.
• Redhawk: Buffalo Bore, Underwood, Grizzly and DoubleTap all list it. A Redhawk marked only for .45 Colt must not be fed .45 ACP, by Ruger’s own manual.

Ruger says as much about the new gun itself. Its manual describes the New Vaquero this way: “Its cylinder frame and grip frame are slightly smaller than the original Ruger Vaquero.” Our Colt Single Action Army guide and Uberti 1873 Cattleman review cover the Colt-size guns.

The Standard: 14,000 psi, and Nothing Above It

SAAMI limits the 45 Colt to 14,000 CUP by the crusher method and 14,000 psi by transducer, with a 250 to 255-grain bullet at 900 fps from the test barrel. The two numbers match here by coincidence, and CUP isn’t psi.

The SAAMI standard has no 45 Colt +P entry anywhere. The only +P cartridges it lists are the .38 Special, .38 Super, 9mm Luger and .45 Automatic. Rifles get nothing of their own either, because SAAMI’s rifle standard has no .45 Colt entry.

So a lever action in .45 Colt is built to a revolver cartridge’s standard. Europe’s C.I.P. sheet for the 45 Colt gives 1,100 bar by transducer. It’s a different test from SAAMI’s, so don’t convert one into the other.

The limit is low because it has to protect a design from 1873. Buffalo Bore calls 14,000 the old black powder standard, and Pearce writes that even standard loads should only be used in guns originally designed for smokeless powder.

The .45 Colt Trap: One Headstamp, Three Power Levels

Three kinds of .45 Colt ammo share one headstamp: standard loads at 705 to 960 fps, heavy standard loads at about 950 to 1,100 fps, and most +P loads at 1,200 to 1,500 fps. All three chamber in every .45 Colt gun.

What +P means on a .45 Colt box

SAAMI defines +P as ammunition loaded to a higher pressure and marked +P on the case headstamp, and it lists that grade for the 9mm Luger but not the 45 Colt. On a .45 Colt box it’s the maker’s own word.

Pearce puts it flatly in Handloader: “SAAMI has not established any .45 Colt +P standards.”

Buffalo Bore agrees: “SAAMI has never recognized the use of 45 Colt+P ammo.” Of the ammunition makers we read, only DoubleTap states a pressure for its +P loads, at 27,500 psi. That’s nearly twice the standard.

Handloaders use two more figures. Pearce sorts guns into a 23,000 psi tier and a 32,000 CUP tier for his own loading data, in two different units. Neither is a standard, and no factory box we read is sold for that middle tier.

Where Ruger only came from

Ruger has chambered its large Blackhawk frame in .45 Colt since 1970, by Buffalo Bore’s account, and handloaders soon found it would take far more than 14,000. Loading manuals began printing separate data for the big Ruger.

That shorthand became the phrase Ruger only. It was never Ruger’s term.

And it stopped being reliable in 2005, when the New Vaquero put a famous Ruger name on a smaller frame.

What the makers print and what the stores drop

The makers of the hottest loads label them best. Buffalo Bore’s page for its 325-grain +P load lists the large-frame Rugers by name and says the load is not intended for the New Model Vaquero. Underwood prints a safe list and a do-not-use list.

Other pages say less. Cor-Bon’s says, “Only use it in firearms rated for 45 Colt +P,” and names no gun. HSM’s page for the 50-round box of its 325-grain Bear Load doesn’t use the term +P or name a gun at all, while its page for the 20-round box mentions +P in one line.

Dealers then label the same Bear Load both ways. In our own catalog one store’s title for it carries +P and another store’s doesn’t. A buyer who sorts by price and reads only the title has no way to know which kind of box is in the cart.

That matters because nothing stops the round from going in. Buffalo Bore says its +P load “will chamber in any 45 colt firearm such as the Colt SAA or its clones, but firing this +P load in any firearm not designed for it would be disastrous.”

What happens if you get it wrong

We read 33 owner threads on this. One owner reported a burst revolver, a large-frame Vaquero firing a +P load it was rated for, and another blamed a bad round or a flawed gun. A forum can’t tell you how many guns fail, so we won’t put a number on it.

Don’t read a quiet forum as permission. No visible harm after a few rounds says nothing about how much margin is left. What experienced owners warn about is wear: stretched frames and revolvers going out of time.

American Rifleman’s advice is the right one. Its article on +P admits “there is no official, industry-approved list of which .45 Colt handguns and rifles can or cannot safely fire +P rated ammunition,” and tells readers who aren’t sure to assume the answer is no.

45 Colt vs 45 Long Colt, .45 ACP and .454 Casull: What Interchanges

45 Colt vs 45 Long Colt is a question with a one-line answer: they’re the same cartridge. SAAMI’s official name is 45 Colt, its 2021 list of cartridge names records 45 Long Colt as an alternate, and one drawing gives one case length of 1.285 inches.

The Long was never official. It came into use to tell the round from the shorter .45 Smith & Wesson cartridge the Army issued beside it from the mid-1870s. There never was a .45 Short Colt, and 45 LC is trade shorthand.

Can you shoot 45 ACP in a 45 Colt? No. Ruger’s Redhawk manual says .45 ACP should not be used in revolvers marked for .45 Colt. It works only in a convertible with its own extra cylinder, or in a gun built for moon clips such as the Governor.

The .454 Casull question runs one way. SAAMI’s interchangeability list says a gun chambered in .454 Casull may fire .45 Colt, and a .460 S&W Magnum may fire both. A .454 round must never go into a .45 Colt gun.

The short cases are a revolver trick. One SASS Wire shooter says Schofield rounds didn’t work in his 1866, 1873 or 1892 lever guns, and a High Road poster notes that Ruger cylinders need room cut for the larger rims. Try a few before you buy a case. Our Taurus Judge review covers the .410 side.

Old Guns and Old Boxes

Colt Single Action Army revolvers below serial 192,000, made before 1900, are black powder guns, and Handloader says they “should never be used with any smokeless powder loads.” The same goes for the Colt Model 1878 double action.

Writers give other serial numbers, because they’re measuring different things. Serial 164,100 of 1896 marks a frame change. John Taffin reads 180,000 of 1898 as the start of the smokeless guns and keeps his own smokeless loads for revolvers numbered 203,000 and up. The cross-pin frame alone doesn’t prove anything.

So an original Colt needs a gunsmith before it needs ammunition. Buffalo Bore limits even its standard-pressure loads to post-war guns in normal working condition, and Uberti’s manual tells replica owners not to use old cartridges at all.

Old boxes have their own problems. Balloon-head cases were dropped around World War II and still turn up, and Pearce says they “should not be used.” Boxes from before about 1900 are black powder loads. Treat any of them as a collectible.

If an old round clicks and doesn’t fire, keep the muzzle downrange and wait. The NRA’s range safety guidance says at least 60 seconds before you open the action. And if a shot sounds weak, stop and check the bore for a stuck bullet before you fire again.

45 Colt Ballistics and What the Round Is Good For

Winchester lists its standard .45 Colt load at a muzzle velocity of 860 fps and a muzzle energy of 419 foot-pounds with a 255-grain lead bullet. That’s a little more than the same maker’s .45 ACP and about a third of its .44 Magnum.

A standard .45 Colt is no .44 Magnum. On Winchester’s own page the .44 Magnum makes 1,175 foot-pounds against 396 for the matching .45 Colt load. Winchester doesn’t state a test barrel for either.

The +P loads change the picture. Buffalo Bore lists its 325-grain load at 1,325 fps and 1,267 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, and Underwood lists a 250-grain hollow point at 1,400 fps. Those are .44 Magnum numbers, from guns the size of a .44 Magnum.

Barrel length moves 45 Colt ballistics too. DoubleTap lists its standard 255-grain load at 765 fps from a 2.5-inch barrel, 900 fps from 5.5 inches and 975 fps from 7.5 inches.

A rifle adds a lot. Buffalo Bore clocked one +P load at 1,526 fps from a 5.5-inch Vaquero and 1,890 fps from a 20-inch Marlin 1894, and DoubleTap lists another at 1,250 fps from a revolver and 1,605 from a carbine.

The best 45 Colt ammo for self defense

You don’t need +P for this. In two owner threads we read, 2 of 52 posts suggested a +P load for defense against people. The rest named standard loads.

The loads owners named were hollow points from Hornady, Winchester and Federal, and plain 250-grain lead flat points. Hornady lists Critical Defense at 920 fps from a 3-inch barrel, the only load here tested from a barrel that short. For a Judge or a Governor, Buffalo Bore says standard pressure only.

For home defense the same rule holds: choose a standard-pressure hollow point, and leave +P for the guns its maker lists by name. Buffalo Bore also loads a 225-grain Barnes XPB bullet at 1,000 fps at standard pressure and rates that load for self defense. Our best defensive ammo guide covers the other calibers.

45 Colt ammo for deer and bear

American Rifleman’s Dave Campbell writes that a decent shot with a .45 Colt will handle “desperados, deer or even black bears.” Owners on the hunting forums agree about deer. Seven said a standard load is enough inside 100 yards, and none said +P is needed.

The effective range of a .45 Colt depends on the load. Buffalo Bore rates its standard-pressure Barnes load for deer-size game at less than 50 yards.

Big bears are where the heavy loads earn their price. HSM sells its 325-grain load for big game hunting and bear defense, and Buffalo Bore rates its 300-grain +P load for big game up to 1,000 pounds. Those loads belong in a large-frame Ruger or a strong lever action, never a Judge. Check your state’s rules before you hunt with a handgun cartridge.

Lever actions are the easy way to more speed. American Rifleman notes that rifles weren’t chambered for the .45 Colt in the 1800s, since the small rim “would not feed or extract reliably in the lever-action rifles of the day.” Modern ones run fine. Our best lever action rifles roundup covers them.

.45 Colt Myths vs. the Truth

The .45 Colt ammo myth that costs owners most is that every Ruger takes Ruger only loads: 2 current Rugers, the New Vaquero and the flattop Blackhawk, are excluded by name on the makers’ +P lists. Here are the others.

Our Range Notes: Six Loads, Two Revolvers and a Carbine

We shot six factory loads through a Uberti 1873 Cattleman with a 4.75-inch barrel, a large-frame Ruger Blackhawk with a 4.62-inch barrel and a Rossi R92 carbine with a 20-inch barrel. That was 420 rounds of .45 Colt ammo over two September mornings, in ten-shot strings over a Garmin Xero C1 chronograph.

Groups were the best of three five-shot groups from a rest. The carbine added 250 to 330 fps to every standard load and almost 390 fps to the +P, which lines up with what Buffalo Bore and DoubleTap publish for their own loads.

We kept the Underwood +P out of the Cattleman. Underwood’s own page excludes Colt-pattern replicas, and that’s the whole point of this guide. The Blackhawk and the R92 are both on its list.

Recoil tells you what’s in the cylinder even if the box doesn’t. The cowboy loads were a push. The +P load in the Blackhawk rolled the grip hard in the hand and left no doubt it belonged to a different class of ammunition, though the case and the headstamp looked like all the others.

The carbine fed everything we gave it. We left Critical Defense out of the tube, because LEVERevolution is the load Hornady sells for tubular magazines, and other makers warn that long bullets can hang up in some rifles. Cycle five by hand with the muzzle in a safe direction before you trust a new load.

A Short History of the .45 Colt

Colt and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company get the credit for the .45 Colt, developed in 1872 and first chambered in the Single Action Army revolver that the Army accepted in 1873. It was a black powder cartridge.

The classic commercial load put a 250 to 255-grain lead bullet over 40 grains of black powder, at roughly 850 to 1,000 fps depending on the source.

The Army’s own load was lighter, with about 30 grains under a 250-grain bullet. Then in 1875 it bought the Smith & Wesson Schofield, whose cylinder was too short for the Colt round. Frankford Arsenal ended up issuing one short cartridge for both guns, and the long one picked up its nickname.

The .38 Long Colt replaced it in 1892. After the Philippine fighting the Army came back to .45 with the Colt New Service as the Model 1909. Smokeless factory loads had arrived around 1900, at about 850 to 870 fps.

Then came 1970, by Buffalo Bore’s account, and a large-frame Ruger, and the handloaders took it from there. Cowboy action shooting did the rest, and it’s what put the round in lever actions. Our cowboy action shooting guide explains the sport, and our Winchester 1892 review covers the strongest of those rifles.

A Note on Reloading

SAAMI’s drawing gives a bullet diameter of .450 to .456 inch, and modern jacketed bullets run .451 to .452. Colt cylinder throats have measured from .449 to .460 inch, by Pearce’s count in a second Handloader article. That spread is an accuracy problem for reloaders, not a safety problem with boxed ammunition.

Starline lists its new brass at 1.27 to 1.28 inches with a large pistol primer pocket, and Magtech’s factory loads use a large pistol primer too. Measure your throats before you order bullets, and remember that Uberti accepts no liability for reloads and Ruger disclaims handloaded ammunition.

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 .45 Colt Ammo to Buy

For most owners the .45 Colt ammo to buy is a 50-round box of 250-grain lead, which cost $0.82 to $1.12 a round from Winchester and Magtech at our dealers on October 2, 2026. The gun and the job decide the rest.

• For cowboy action matches: Magtech, Winchester, Fiocchi or HSM lead loads by the case. Hornady and Black Hills if your gun groups them better.
• For a Colt single action, a replica or a New Vaquero: standard loads only. Skip every box marked +P, however the store words the title.
• For self defense with a Judge or a Governor: a standard hollow point such as Hornady Critical Defense. Buffalo Bore says no to +P in both.
• For deer hunting with a lever action: a standard 225 to 255-grain load inside 100 yards. Hornady makes LEVERevolution for tubular magazines.
• For bear country with a large-frame Ruger: a heavy hard cast load from a maker that lists your gun by name.
• For a Colt made before 1900: a gunsmith first, and no smokeless ammunition.

If you’re shopping for the gun too, the best revolvers roundup covers what’s for sale now.

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 and the 7.62×25 Tokarev ammo guide.

Lead image: composite based on a photo of a U.S. cavalry Colt Single Action Army by Hmaag, CC0, and photos of a .45 Colt cartridge by Malis, public domain, all from Wikimedia Commons.

.45 Colt Ammo FAQ