Best .22 LR Ammo
Why .22 is finicky, which loads run cleanly, and how to find what your rifle or pistol likes.
The Bottom Line
.22 LR is the most-shot cartridge in the country — cheap, quiet, and nearly recoilless, perfect for training and plinking. The catch is that rimfire ammo is inherently more variable than centerfire, and semi-auto .22s in particular can be picky: bulk-pack promotional ammo sometimes causes failures to feed or fire in guns that run flawlessly on better loads like CCI Standard Velocity, CCI Mini-Mag, or SK/Eley match ammo.
The practical approach is to buy a few different loads and see what your specific gun runs cleanly and shoots accurately, then stock up on that. For a bolt gun or revolver you have wide latitude; for a finicky semi-auto, slightly higher-quality ammo often cures reliability complaints. Either way, .22 remains the best value in shooting for building fundamentals.