Cost Per Round, Honestly
How to compute the actual cost of a handloaded round, including the consumables most people forget about. BrassTracker uses this exact formula on every load and recomputes it the moment a component price changes.
The Four-line Version
For each round you load:
- Bullet cost = price of the bullet box ÷ count.
- Powder cost = price of the powder can ÷ (7000 ÷ charge in grains).
- Primer cost = price of the primer sleeve ÷ count.
- Brass cost = price of the brass lot ÷ (count × expected firings).
Round cost = sum of the four.
That's the formula. Everything else on this page is helping you fill in the numbers honestly.
Bullet Cost: Easy
Bullet boxes come in fixed counts (usually 50, 100, 250, 500). Divide the box price by the count.
Box of 100 match bullets at $52 = $0.52 per bullet.
Powder Cost: The Trick
A pound of powder is 7000 grains. So if you load X grains per round, you get 7000 ÷ X rounds per pound. At a charge of 40 gr that works out to 175 rounds per pound.
1 lb of rifle powder at $54, charge 40 gr → $54 ÷ 175 ≈ $0.31 per round of powder.
For 8-lb jugs, divide the price by 8 to get the per-pound number first.
Primer Cost: Also Easy
Primers come in sleeves of 100 (most common) or 1000.
Sleeve of 100 large-rifle primers at $10 = $0.10 per round.
Brass Cost: The Honest Part Most People Skip
If your brass lasts 8 firings, you're using 1/8th of the case's value per round.
100 pieces of premium .308 brass at $120 = $1.20 per case. Expected 12 firings → $1.20 ÷ 12 = $0.10 per round of brass amortization.
If you got the brass once-fired free, brass cost is $0, but you should still track expected firings to know when to retire the lot. Free brass that splits at firing 4 is worth less than $1.20- per-piece premium brass that survives 12 firings.
Putting It Together: A Worked Example
The numbers below are illustrative math inputs, not a recommended load. Always verify charge weight and component pairing against a current published reloading manual.
Match-grade 6.5mm precision rifle round:
- 140gr match bullet - $0.52
- X gr rifle powder - $0.31
- Match large-rifle primer - $0.13
- Premium brass amortized 12 firings - $0.10
Total: $1.06 per round.
For comparison, factory match-grade 6.5mm 140gr ammunition runs $40-50 per 20-round box, or $2.00-2.50 per round.
What Most People Forget
The four numbers above cover the ammunition. They don't cover:
- Equipment amortization. A press, dies, scale, and chrono is a $500-2000 up-front cost. If you load 1000 rounds a year, that's $0.50 per round at $500 of gear. BrassTracker doesn't try to track this - it would require lifecycle assumptions about your gear that we shouldn't make for you.
- Range fees. Not handloading-specific.
- Time. Some people cost their time at zero (it's a hobby); some cost it at their hourly rate. Your call.
- Tumbling media, lube, lubrication, brass-prep tools. Real costs, but small per-round (~$0.01-0.03 typical).
What BrassTracker Shows
When you compare two loads, BrassTracker surfaces two cost rows:
- $ / round. The four-line sum above.
- $ / SD fps. Round cost divided by the load's SD, useful when the cheaper load shoots noticeably looser. Lower is better.
Component prices are stored once per component. Update a primer price when you buy a new sleeve, and every recipe that uses that primer picks up the new number on the next save. Old data does not rewrite itself; you just stop comparing apples to last-year's apples.
Why a Spreadsheet Drifts
The math above is straightforward. The trouble starts when component prices move and your spreadsheet doesn't - you end up with last year's CPR on this year's loads. CPR vs spreadsheet walks through the failure modes and what BrassTracker does instead.