Liberty Centurion 24 Review (2026): Measured Against Its Rivals

Affiliate disclosure: This Liberty Centurion 24 review contains affiliate links. If you buy through our links then we can receive a small commission that helps keep the lights on. You don’t pay anything more.

The Liberty Centurion 24 is the safe most people compare everything else against when they buy their first full-size gun safe. It’s a 375-pound, 14-gauge steel box built in Payson, Utah, with an S&G Spartan keypad, seven locking bars and a 40-minute fire rating. Liberty sells it for $829, and it’s the cheapest way into a Liberty with a door panel and room for a real collection.

I’ve gone through every figure Liberty publishes for the Centurion line, drawn the safe to scale from them, and put it next to the Browning, Winchester and bigger Liberty safes people cross-shop it with. This review covers what the numbers mean in your house: whether it fits through your door, how long it really holds out in a fire, how many guns actually fit, and what changed after Liberty handed a customer’s code to the FBI.

Last updated October 23, 2026

Table of Contents

Review: Liberty Centurion 24, the Benchmark First Gun Safe

Our Rating: 7.5/10

Liberty Centurion 24 Specs at a Glance

Maker price	$829 (Liberty, October 2026)
Rated capacity	24 long guns
Outside (H x W x D)	59.5 x 28.25 x 20 in
Inside (H x W x D)	56 x 26.25 x 13.5 in, 11.5 cu ft
Weight	375 lb
Doorway needed	22 in, per Liberty
Body steel	14-gauge
Locking bars	7, each 4 in wide and 3/16 in thick
Fire rating	40 minutes at 1,200°F, with a Palusol door seal
Lock	S&G Spartan electronic, UL listed
Security rating	Liberty Level 3 of 10; California DOJ-approved firearm safety device
Warranty	Lifetime, transferable, on the body; 5 years on the lock
Made in	Payson, Utah, from U.S. and global parts

Quick Take

The Centurion 24 is a good first safe and an honest one. It keeps guns away from kids and visitors, slows down a smash-and-grab burglar, and fits through a normal interior door, which plenty of bigger safes don’t. Liberty backs the body for life, including a free replacement, delivered, if it’s damaged in a fire or a break-in.

What you give up is steel and fire time. The body is 14-gauge, the thinnest steel Liberty uses, and its 40-minute rating is the shortest of every safe I compare it with here. For $220 more, the Browning FMJ 24 gives you the same steel and the same size with 60 minutes at a hotter 1,400°F.

My pick for most buyers is still a Centurion, but check the 32 first. It costs $110 more, holds a third more inside, and works out to the lowest price per cubic foot in the line. Only buy the 24 if your doorway is too narrow for the 32 or the extra 4.5 inches of depth won’t fit your space.

Best For: A first full-size safe for 8 to 15 long guns on a ground floor, on a budget under $900. Not for a collection worth more than a few thousand dollars, and not for anyone who lives where wildfires burn for hours.

The Centurion 24, Measured

Liberty publishes the outside and inside of every Centurion to a quarter inch, so I drew the 24 to scale from those numbers. Two things jump out of the drawing that you won’t see on a product page.

First, the walls are thin. The outside is 28.25 inches wide and the inside is 26.25, so steel, fireboard and lining take up just 1 inch on each side. Second, the depth is where the space goes. The safe is 20 inches deep outside and 13.5 inside, so the door, its fireboard, the door panel and the back eat 6.5 inches between them. That 13.5 inches is the number to check against your longest scoped rifle, not the 24-gun rating.

The footprint is 3.92 square feet. Spread across that, the empty safe puts a floor load of 95.6 pounds on each square foot before you load a single gun. That’s fine on a slab, and it’s a question worth answering before you put it upstairs. Our guide to putting a gun safe on the second floor explains why that number isn’t the whole story.

Will It Fit Through Your Door? The Quarter-Inch Problem

Liberty lists a 22-inch minimum doorway for the Centurion 24. A safe goes through a door on its side, so what has to fit is the depth: 20 inches. But the spec table’s own footnote says to add 1.75 inches for the handle, 1.5 inches for a plug and a quarter inch for the outlet kit.

Add the handle and you’re at 21.75 inches against a 22-inch opening. That leaves a quarter of an inch. If anything is plugged into the back, the safe is 23.25 inches and it won’t go through at all. Measure the clear opening between the door stops with the door open, not the door itself, because the stops and the hinge side take away more than people expect.

The same footnote catches the Centurion 32. Its depth plus the handle comes to 26.25 inches, half an inch more than the 25.75-inch doorway Liberty lists for it. That number only works with the handle off, so ask the dealer how they’ll handle it before delivery day. For a 22-inch door, the 24 is the biggest Centurion that goes through.

Fire Rating: 40 Minutes, or 30?

Liberty’s Centurion page says the 12 and 18 are rated 30 minutes at 1,200°F and the 24 and 32 are rated 40 minutes at 1,200°F. Lower down the same page, the compare table lists 30 minutes for all four. I’m using 40 for the 24, because it’s in the spec text and it’s what Home Depot’s listing says, but treat it as Liberty’s claim until the company fixes the table.

Either way, it’s the shortest rating in this comparison, and it’s tested at the lowest temperature. The Browning FMJ 24 and the Winchester Bandit 14 are both rated at 1,400°F, for 60 and 45 minutes. The Liberty USA 30 doubles the time at the same 1,200°F, and the Browning Sporter 33 runs to 95 minutes.

These are the makers’ own tests, not an independent standard, so they’re useful for comparing one maker’s safes and much less useful across brands. Our explainer on gun safe fire ratings covers what the tests do and don’t measure. What matters for a buyer is simple: a house fire that reaches the safe’s room can burn longer than 40 minutes, and the Palusol seal, which swells when it gets hot to close the door gap, only buys time. If your area has long-burning wildfires, buy more minutes.

Steel, Locking Bars and What Level 3 Means

The Centurion uses a 14-gauge steel body, folded into what Liberty calls a Dual Fusion frame to stiffen it. Liberty doesn’t print the thickness, but Browning lists 14-gauge as 5/64 inch, just under 2 mm. Liberty’s own figure for the 12-gauge steel in its USA series is 0.105 inch, or 2.67 mm.

The door is held by seven of Liberty’s Solid State locking bars, each 4 inches wide and 3/16 inch thick. More bars sounds better, but it’s the steel that matters. End on, the Centurion’s seven bars total 5.25 square inches of steel. The Liberty USA 30 has only six bars, but at 1/4 inch thick they total 6 square inches, and the Winchester Bandit 14’s eight 1-inch round bolts total 6.28. Behind the lock, a one-piece hardened steel plate resists drilling, and a relocker jams the bolts if someone punches the lock.

Liberty ranks its safes on a 10-level scale built from steel thickness, door type, lock features and outside testing. The Centurion is Level 3, which Liberty itself describes as suited to essential security needs: keeping guns locked away and protecting basic documents. That’s honest. It’s a residential security container, not a true safe, and our RSC vs true safe guide explains the difference. Bolting it to the floor matters more on a thin-walled safe than on any other, because a 375-pound box on its back is far easier to pry. Here’s how to bolt down a gun safe properly.

The Lock: S&G Spartan Electronic

The Centurion ships with a Sargent & Greenleaf Spartan, and it’s the best part of the safe. There’s no dial option on the Centurion; if you want a mechanical lock, Liberty sells one on the USA series. S&G’s data sheet lists it as UL Type 1 certified and EMP resistant, with a motor-driven bolt rated to withstand 225 pounds of bolt-end pressure. It runs on one 9V alkaline battery, which S&G tested for up to 10,000 openings, and it warns you when the battery is low.

It takes one master code and one user code, so you can give a spouse their own code and turn it off later without changing yours. Five wrong codes in a row trigger a penalty lockout. That’s good for security and bad if a curious kid is mashing the keypad, so teach the household the rule. The lock also supports a management reset code, which is the mechanism behind the next section.

S&G gives the lock itself a two-year warranty. Liberty covers it for five years on the Centurion, and sells an extension: another 10 years for $99, or lifetime for $159, if you buy within 12 months of purchase.

How Many Guns Actually Fit

Liberty rates the Centurion 24 for 24 long guns and says plainly that capacity may vary with the size of the guns and scopes. The rating assumes slim, unscoped guns packed in the barrel racks. The inside is 26.25 inches wide and 13.5 inches deep, and the dual-flex shelving takes up part of that width as soon as you use it for anything but rifles.

Plan on about half the rating for a mixed collection with optics: 8 to 12 scoped rifles and shotguns, plus handguns on the door panel and ammo on the shelves. That’s the same range our best gun safe for AR-15 guide gives for this safe with accessorized rifles. If you own more than a dozen long guns today, you’ll own more next year, and that’s the best argument for the 32. Our gun safe sizes guide shows how to count before you buy.

Put a dehumidifier in it from day one. A sealed steel box with a fire seal traps moisture, and a rod or a rechargeable unit costs far less than one rusted rifle. Our gun safe dehumidifier picks cover both kinds.

Centurion 12 vs 18 vs 24 vs 32

All four Centurions share the same 59.5-inch height, 14-gauge steel, seven locking bars and Spartan lock. What changes is width, depth, weight, fire rating and price.

Model	Liberty price	Outside W x D	Inside cu ft	Doorway	Weight	Fire
Centurion 12	$599	18.25 x 16 in	5.3	18 in	245 lb	30 min
Centurion 18	$729	24.25 x 20 in	9.7	22 in	336 lb	30 min
Centurion 24	$829	28.25 x 20 in	11.5	22 in	375 lb	40 min
Centurion 32	$939	28.25 x 24.5 in	15.31	25.75 in	411 lb	40 min

The 24 is the sweet spot for a 22-inch door. It costs $100 more than the 18 for the same depth, 4 inches more width, 10 more minutes of fire rating and 1.8 more cubic feet. The 32 is the best value in the whole line at $61.33 per cubic foot, against $72.09 for the 24. Sportsman’s Warehouse sells a Centurion 32 Deluxe for less than Liberty’s own price on the 32:

Liberty and the FBI: What Changed About Your Code

In 2023, Liberty gave the FBI the access code to a customer’s safe during a raid on an Arkansas man’s home. As Straight Arrow News reported on September 8, 2023, the warrant didn’t name Liberty or require it to help. The backlash was immediate, and Liberty changed its policy. Its statement said that going forward it would require a subpoena that legally compels it to supply access codes, and could only do so if the codes still exist in its system.

That last part is the useful bit for an owner. Liberty now runs a combination removal request form. Fill it in and Liberty deletes your combination recovery information. The catch is spelled out on the form: once it’s gone, Liberty can’t recover it, and it can’t help you if you forget your code.

My advice is to do it, and to write your code down and keep it somewhere that isn’t the safe. Any maker that can reset your lock for you has to keep some record that makes it possible. Liberty is the one that now gives you a form to delete it.

Warranty: The Strongest Part of the Deal

Liberty’s lifetime warranty covers the safe body and transfers to the next owner if you sell the safe or hand it down. If the safe is damaged in a fire or an attempted break-in, Liberty says it will provide a new safe delivered to your home, with no delivery charge, and pay to remove the old one. That goes further than most warranties, which repair the safe and leave you to move it.

The lock is the exception at five years, as covered above. Keep your receipt and register the safe, because the extension has to be bought within 12 months. Our gun safe warranty comparison puts Liberty’s fine print next to eight other brands.

Delivery, Bolting Down and the Wait

Liberty builds Centurions to order in its Payson, Utah factory and says most are delivered in 8 to 10 weeks or less. The company says it has built over 3 million safes there, in a 300,000 square foot plant that can turn out more than 700 a day. Its wording on where they’re made is careful and fair: made in the USA from U.S. and global parts. Order from Liberty and it routes the order to a local dealer, who contacts you within 3 business days. Liberty says 98% of its customers choose professional installation, where the crew places the safe, levels it, bolts it down from the inside and walks you through setting the code. Stairs, tile and second-floor jobs cost extra.

At 375 pounds, the Centurion 24 is one of the few full-size safes you can install yourself with a stair-rated hand truck and two strong helpers. Liberty still recommends a pro, and so do I if there are stairs involved. Our gun safe installation cost guide shows what dealers charge, and how to move a gun safe covers the DIY route.

Liberty Centurion 24 vs Browning FMJ 24

This is the cross-shop that matters most. The Browning FMJ 24 costs $1,049 on Browning’s site, $220 more than the Centurion 24. They’re close in size: the FMJ is 58 x 28 x 20 inches with 11 cubic feet inside, against the Centurion’s 11.5. Both are 14-gauge, and the FMJ weighs 386 pounds to the Centurion’s 375.

The difference is fire. Browning rates the FMJ 24 for 60 minutes at 1,400°F, which is 50% longer at a hotter test temperature, with external hinges and Browning’s ThermaBlock insulation. Its door uses eight 6.75-inch Megabars, each 3/16 inch thick. If fire is the reason you’re buying a safe, the $220 is well spent. If theft and kids are the reason, the Centurion’s warranty and lower price win. Our Liberty vs Browning comparison matches the two brands series by series.

Liberty Centurion 24 vs Winchester Bandit 14

The Winchester Bandit 14 is the farm-store alternative. Winchester doesn’t sell it on its own site, so you’ll find it at Tractor Supply, Academy and Fleet Farm. It’s 60 x 22 x 18 inches outside and 314 pounds. Winchester lists its volume as 13.8 cubic feet, but that’s the outside of the box; the inside measures 57.5 x 20.5 x 12 inches, about 8.2 cubic feet. It has 14-gauge steel, eight 1-inch bolts and 45 minutes at 1,400°F. Its narrower body is easier through tight doors, and its fire rating beats the Centurion’s on paper.

Inside, it’s 12 inches deep against the Centurion’s 13.5, and it uses a SECURAM lock with a backup key rather than the Spartan. Winchester also offers lifetime free replacement after a fire or break-in. It comes down to the store price on the day: if the Bandit is $100 or more under the Centurion, it’s the better buy for a small collection.

When the Liberty USA 30 Is Worth $1,140 More

The Liberty USA 30 is the step up inside the same brand, at $1,969. You get 12-gauge steel, 60 minutes of fire protection, Level 5 security and 14.6 cubic feet inside. It weighs 565 pounds and needs a 24-inch doorway. That’s a real jump: the steel is about 34% thicker by the figures in the chart above, and the fire time is 50% longer.

It’s worth it once your guns are worth more than about five times the safe, or once you’re storing things you can’t replace. Below that, the Centurion and a good alarm protect more for the money. Our best Liberty gun safes ranking covers the full line, and the best gun safes under $1,000 puts the Centurion against every rival in its price band.

Who Should NOT Buy the Liberty Centurion 24

• Anyone in wildfire country. Forty minutes at 1,200°F is the shortest rating here. Buy at least 60.
• Owners of a valuable collection. 14-gauge steel slows a burglar with hand tools; it doesn’t stop one. Spend the money on 12-gauge or thicker.
• Anyone with a doorway under 22 inches. Measure the clear opening first. The Centurion 12 is the only one that goes through an 18-inch door.
• People with a dozen scoped rifles. It won’t hold them comfortably. Get the 32.
• Anyone who needs a safe this week. Liberty builds to order, so plan on 8 to 10 weeks, or buy one in stock at a retailer.

Price and Where to Buy

Liberty lists the Centurion 24 at $829 and sends the order to a local dealer for delivery. Liberty was also including a free HDV-50 handgun vault, a $29.99 value, with safe orders in October 2026. Retail prices run a little lower at times, and the card below shows what we can find today. If a store has one in stock, you skip the 8-to-10-week build time.

Final Verdict

The Liberty Centurion 24 earns its place as the default first safe. It goes through a normal door, it’s light enough to install without a crane, its lock is better than it needs to be, and its warranty replaces the whole safe after a fire or a break-in. The price per cubic foot is the second best of any safe here.

Just know what it isn’t. It’s a 14-gauge residential container with the shortest fire rating in its class, and Liberty can’t decide whether that rating is 30 or 40 minutes. Buy the 32 if your door allows it, the Browning FMJ 24 if fire is your worry, and the USA 30 once your guns are worth protecting properly. For everyone else, the Centurion 24 is the right first safe.

FAQ: Liberty Centurion 24