7 Best CO2 Pistols (2026): Replicas, Revolvers & Plinkers

Last updated July 26, 2026 · By Nick Hall. For the big picture, start with our complete air rifle buying guide.

CO2 pistols are the easiest, most fun way into airgun shooting. Drop in a 12-gram cartridge and you have dozens of shots of realistic, low-cost plinking, and many are licensed replicas of real handguns that make superb backyard trainers. Here are the best CO2 pistols in 2026.

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Quick Answer: The best CO2 pistol for realistic training is a licensed blowback replica like the SIG Sauer P320 or Umarex Glock 17, which mimic the real gun’s controls and recoil. The best value plinker is the Crosman 2240, the best CO2 revolver is the Crosman Vigilante, and for the most shots per cartridge, a non-blowback replica is the pick. Remember CO2 is temperature-sensitive.

Table of Contents

The Seven CO2 Pistols Worth Buying

Every pistol below was checked against our own live pricing first, and this is the one airgun category where that check comes back clean across the board: all seven have a stocked price from a retailer we track, from thirty seven dollars to a hundred and ninety.

CO2 pistol	Best for	Power plant	Street price
Crosman C11	Cheapest worth owning	12 gram CO2	around $37
Crosman Vigilante	Best revolver	12 gram CO2	around $59
Umarex Colt Commander	Best 1911 replica	12 gram CO2	around $61
Sig Sauer P365 Air Pistol	Best carry trainer	12 gram CO2	around $100
Sig Sauer P320 Air Pistol	Best duty trainer	12 gram CO2	around $110
Glock 17 Air Pistol	Best Glock replica	12 gram CO2	around $130
Umarex Beretta	Best full size blowback	12 gram CO2	around $189

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1. Crosman C11: Cheapest worth owning

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $37

Thirty seven dollars for a compact BB pistol with an eighteen round magazine. It is small, it is plastic, and it does exactly what a cheap CO2 pistol should do, which is put holes in cans all afternoon for the price of a takeaway. Nobody should expect precision and nobody who buys one is disappointed.

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2. Crosman Vigilante: Best revolver

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $59

A ten shot revolver that takes pellets as well as BBs, which makes it far more useful than the price suggests. Single action for accuracy, double action for fun, and the six inch barrel gives it enough sight radius to actually aim. The most entertaining thing on this page.

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3. Umarex Colt Commander: Best 1911 replica

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $61

A licensed Colt 1911 in CO2, with the weight and the controls in the right places. If you shoot a 1911 and want somewhere cheap to practise a draw and a trigger press, this does the job for sixty dollars. The safety works, the magazine drops, and it feels close enough to be useful.

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4. Sig Sauer P365 Air Pistol: Best carry trainer

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $100

A working BB copy of the P365, same size and same controls, with a slide that cycles. If you carry a P365 this is the cheapest draw practice available, and it costs roughly what fifty rounds of defensive ammunition does. Buy it for the repetitions, not for the groups.

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5. Sig Sauer P320 Air Pistol: Best duty trainer

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $110

The full size version of the same idea, and the one to buy if the gun on your belt is a P320 or an M17. Sig built these deliberately as trainers rather than as toys and it shows in the controls. Same caveats as every replica: it teaches handling and it does not teach marksmanship.

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6. Glock 17 Air Pistol: Best Glock replica

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $130

Licensed by Glock and built by Umarex, close enough to the real thing that it fits real holsters. Eighteen rounds, blowback slide, and the trigger is roughly where a Glock trigger lives. It is the best of the licensed replicas and the one most likely to get used rather than shelved.

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7. Umarex Beretta: Best full size blowback

• Caliber: .177
• Power plant: 12 gram CO2
• Street price: around $189

The Beretta 92 in CO2, and the closest thing here to a full weight metal pistol. It costs more than everything else on this page for a reason: the build is a step up and it feels like a firearm in the hand rather than a toy that looks like one. Worth it if realism is the point.

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Why a CO2 Pistol Shoots Flat and Then Falls Off a Cliff

Shoot a CO2 pistol across a chronograph and something odd happens. The velocity barely moves for most of the cartridge, then over a handful of shots it collapses. A pre-charged rifle does the opposite: it declines steadily from the first shot to the last. The reason is worth two minutes because it changes how you use the gun.

A 12 gram cartridge does not hold compressed gas. It holds liquid carbon dioxide with a little gas above it, and the pressure in that space is the vapour pressure of the liquid. Vapour pressure depends on temperature and nothing else. It does not care how much liquid is left, so as long as there is any liquid in the cartridge the pressure feeding the valve is the same as it was on the first shot. Take a shot, some liquid boils off to replace the gas you used, and the pressure returns to exactly where it was.

That is why the velocity is flat. And it is why it collapses: once the last of the liquid has boiled away there is nothing left to replace what you spend, so the remaining gas simply expands and the pressure drops away over a few shots. In a PCP there is no liquid at any point, only compressed air, so every shot lowers the pressure a little and the velocity declines the whole way down.

Two practical things follow. Cold weather costs you velocity directly, because a colder liquid has a lower vapour pressure, which is why the same pistol feels weak in January and fine in July, and why rapid strings drop off as the cartridge chills itself. And a blowback slide spends gas to cycle, so a blowback replica gets perhaps half the shots per cartridge that a fixed-slide pistol does. If shot count matters more than realism, the Vigilante and the C11 are the pistols on this page that do not move their own slides.

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Five of These Look Exactly Like Real Guns

Most of this page is licensed replicas, and one of them fits a real Glock holster. None of them carry a blaze orange muzzle, and that is not an oversight or something a previous owner removed. Federal law puts it there on purpose. Title 15, section 5001 requires a marking approved by the Consumer Product Safety Commission on toy and imitation firearms, and then carves out, in its own words, traditional B-B, paint-ball, or pellet-firing air guns that expel a projectile through the force of air pressure. A CO2 BB pistol is exactly that, so the rule never reaches it.

Which means the responsibility lands on you rather than on the manufacturer. Anybody who sees one of these in your hand has no way to tell it from the gun it copies, because the law does not require it to look like anything else. Keep it in a case between the house and wherever you shoot, do not draw it in public or anywhere it can be seen from the street, and do not hand it to somebody as a joke. Those three habits cover every situation where a replica airgun has caused real trouble.

State law can go further than the federal position, and a few states fold air pistols into their firearm definitions outright, which changes where you can carry one and at what age you can buy it. Our air rifle guide sets out the statutes, our air pistol guide covers the pneumatic side, and none of this is legal advice.

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Blowback vs Non-Blowback CO2 Pistols

The big choice with CO2 pistols is blowback or not. Blowback replicas cycle a moving slide like a real pistol, delivering realistic recoil and slide action that makes them excellent trainers, at the cost of using more gas per shot (fewer shots per cartridge). Non-blowback pistols have a fixed slide, so they waste no gas moving parts and squeeze many more shots from a 12-gram cartridge, making them better for high-volume plinking. Pick blowback for realistic practice, non-blowback for maximum shots.

A Note on CO2 and Temperature

CO2 pressure changes with temperature, so your pistol will shoot faster on a hot day and noticeably slower in the cold, and very cold weather can drop velocity a lot. Store cartridges at room temperature and expect some performance swing outdoors. For consistent power in any weather, a PCP or spring pistol is the better choice, see our best air pistols guide for the full range.

CO2 Pistol FAQ

Want the full range of air pistols, including PCP and pneumatic models? See our best air pistols guide, or explore long guns in our complete air rifle guide.