Should I buy a scope in MRAD or MOA?

MOA and MRAD are both angular units. Neither is finer, neither is more accurate, and neither will make a rifle shoot better. They’re two ways of slicing the same circle — Vortex puts it in exactly those terms in its FAQ: “MOA (Minutes of Angle) and MRAD (Milliradians) are angular units of measure, much like inches and centimeters are linear units of measure.”

The decision that actually matters sits one level down: whether the marks in your reticle and the numbers on your turrets are in the same unit, and whether the maker says which convention it used. Both are checkable on a spec sheet.

What do MOA and MRAD actually measure?

One MOA is a sixtieth of a degree; one milliradian is a thousandth of the distance to the target. Leupold’s glossary gives both: “One Minute of Angle is 1/60th of one degree of a 360° circle,” and “One Milliradian is 1/1000th of the distance to the target. For example 1 Mil is 36” at 1000 yds, or 1m at 1000m.“

Scaled down to the range you’ll actually zero at, Hawke publishes 1 mil as 3.6 inches at 100 yards, or 10 cm at 100 m, and Steiner gives the same 3.6 inches for the spacing between dot centers on a mil-dot reticle. That 10 cm at 100 m is why MRAD reads cleanly in metric: a tenth of a mil is one centimeter at a hundred meters, with no decimals to carry. Leica states the equivalence directly in the PRS 5-30x56i data sheet: “0.1 Mil = 0.1 mrad = 1 cm/100 m per click.”

MOA has no equally tidy number in either system, which is where the trouble starts.

Do manufacturers agree on what one MOA is?

No, and the difference is in print on their own pages. Leupold’s glossary says one MOA is “roughly 1” at 100yds,“ then adds: “More accurately, 1 Minute of Angle is 1.047” at 100yds.“ Steiner’s riflescope glossary publishes the more precise 1.0472 inches — and then rounds it away in the same entry: “For all practical purposes it is called 1 inch at 100 yards. It is 2 inches at 200 yards, 5 inches at 500 yards.” Its click-value entry follows the rounded path too, describing each click as moving impact “¼ inch at 100 yards (MOA).”

Bushnell does the same thing in its riflescope instruction manual: “¼ MOA corresponds to ¼ inch at 100 yards, ½ inch at 200 yards, ¾ inch at 300 yards and so on.” ZEISS goes the other way and publishes the true value in metric — a quarter MOA is “approx. 0.73cm/ 100m”, which is the 1.047-inch figure, not the rounded one.

Here’s the part you can check yourself. The spec tables use true MOA even where the manuals round. Leupold lists the Mark 5HD 5-25x56 in MOA with an elevation adjustment range given three ways for one scope: 120 MOA, 35 MIL, 349 cm at 100 m. Bushnell publishes 100 MOA of elevation on the MOA version of the Match Pro ED 5-30x56 and 29 MRAD on the MRAD version of the same scope. Run those through the rounded inch and 100 MOA of travel would come out at 27.8 mil using Hawke’s published 3.6 inches per mil — not 29. The engineering uses the real number even when the customer-facing manual doesn’t.

It matters at distance, not at the bench. Take Steiner’s own 1.0472 inches: ten times that is 10.47 inches at 1,000 yards against 10 inches from the rounded version — half an inch of error per minute dialed, all in one direction.

What does one click move?

On the scopes checked here, published click values were 1/4 MOA, 0.25 MOA, 0.1 MRAD, and 1/8 MOA on a target scope — nothing else. Hawke lists the Frontier 30 FFP 4-20x50 at “1/4 MOA.” Steiner lists the Predator 8 4-32x56 at 0.25 MOA and the T6Xi 5-30x56 at 0.1 mrad. Leupold’s Competition Series 45x45 is the outlier at 1/8 MOA per click, with 7.5 MOA per turret revolution — a finer dial on a scope built for a known distance and a small group. Vortex’s FAQ notes only that “Units of MRAD are given in .1 increments.”

Half-MOA clicks come up in conversation, but none of these makers published one on any page opened for this guide.

Practically, the quarter-MOA click is slightly finer than the tenth-mil click: ZEISS puts a quarter MOA at about 0.73 cm at 100 m against Leica’s 1 cm for a tenth of a mil. That gap is smaller than the wobble in your position. It is not a reason to choose either one.

Do the reticle and the turrets have to be in the same unit?

They don’t have to be — and that’s the problem, because makers still sell scopes that mix them. The clearest live example is the Hawke Vantage 3-9x40 Mil Dot: the published reticle is “Mil Dot” and the published click value is “1/4 MOA.” Read a hold of 1.5 mils in that reticle and you cannot dial it without first converting to MOA, in your head, on the clock. Nothing is broken; it’s simply work that a matched scope doesn’t ask of you.

Matched pairs are easy to spot once you know to look. ZEISS builds the LRP S3 with a ZF-MRi reticle behind MRAD turrets or a ZF-MOAi reticle behind MOA turrets. Bushnell’s Match Pro ED pairs a “DM2 - 2/10 MRAD Grid Style Tree” with 0.1 MRAD clicks, and a “DM2 - 1 MOA Tree” with 0.25 MOA clicks. Leupold sells the Mark 5HD 5-25x56 as PR2-MOA with quarter-MOA clicks or PR2-MIL with 0.1 Mil clicks. Vortex splits its listings the same way: the Viper PST Gen II 5-25x50 FFP page carries two separate reticle manuals, EBR-7C MOA and EBR-7C MRAD.

There’s a third case: a reticle with no scale at all. The Steiner Predator 4 6-24x50 carries the plain E3 reticle over 0.25 MOA clicks. No unit conflict there, because there’s nothing in the reticle to read — you dial everything. Fine for hunting; just not a holdover system.

One caution on reticle subtensions: they only mean what the maker says at the magnification the maker specifies, which is why the focal plane changes how you read them. That’s a separate decision, covered in first vs second focal plane.

How much elevation travel do makers publish, and what does the number mean?

Total adjustment range and the distance the dial will actually turn are two different figures, and only some makers publish both.

Scope	Unit	Click value	Elevation adjustment	Dial travel limit	Per revolution
ZEISS LRP S3 4-25x50	MRAD	0.1 MRAD	46.5 MRAD	not published	10 MRAD
ZEISS LRP S3 4-25x50	MOA	0.25 MOA	160 MOA	not published	25 MOA
Leupold Mark 5HD 5-25x56	MIL	0.1 Mil	35 MIL	30 MIL	10.5 MIL
Leupold Mark 5HD 5-25x56	MOA	1/4 MOA	120 MOA	71.5 MOA	25 MOA
Bushnell Match Pro ED 5-30x56	MRAD	0.1 MRAD	29 MRAD	29 MRAD	not published
Bushnell Match Pro ED 5-30x56	MOA	0.25 MOA	100 MOA	73 MOA	not published
Steiner T6Xi 5-30x56	MIL	0.1 mrad	26 MIL	not published	not published
Hawke Frontier 30 FFP 4-20x50	MOA	1/4 MOA	79 MOA	not published	not published
Leica PRS 5-30x56i	Mil	0.1 Mil	32 Mil	not published	not published

Labels vary and are not interchangeable: Hawke’s figure is published as “Elevation Turret Clicks (max),” Steiner’s as “Elevation Range” without saying whether that’s total or measured from center, and Leica’s data sheet gives “32/18 Mil” for elevation and windage together. Where a cell says “not published,” the maker’s page carried the other figures but not that one.

The pattern worth noticing is in the two rows that show both numbers. On the same optic, the MOA turret reaches less of the scope’s internal travel than the MRAD one. Leupold’s MOA model stops at 71.5 of its 120 MOA; the MIL model dials all the way to 30 of its 35 MIL, which is more angle. Bushnell’s MRAD version reaches its full 29 MRAD while the MOA version stops at 73 of 100. That’s a property of the turret hardware, not of the unit — but it’s a real difference between two versions of one scope, and only visible if the maker publishes both figures.

Which one should you buy?

Buy the unit your reticle is graduated in, and if you’re starting from nothing, buy the unit the people you shoot with use. Corrections get called out loud on a range and in a hunting party, and “come up four tenths” only helps if your dial has tenths on it. If your drop data, your rangefinder and your habits are in yards and inches, MOA keeps you in one language; if you work in meters, MRAD gives you whole centimeters at 100 m and no conversions at all.

What the unit won’t change is what you see. Resolution, contrast and color fringing come from the glass and coatings, not the turret — covered in ED glass explained.

The short version

Neither unit is more accurate, and the click sizes are close enough that the difference disappears into your own wobble. The real buying mistake is a reticle graduated in one unit behind turrets graduated in the other, and it’s still on sale. Check the reticle name and the click value on the same spec sheet, then check whether the maker publishes both total adjustment range and dial travel limit — those are different numbers. And read the fine print on MOA: some makers publish 1.047 inches at 100 yards, others round it to an inch.