Choosing an Airgun Scope

Before going into a lot of detail about scopes, you should be aware of the two following points:
1. If you shoot a recoilless airgun such as a pre-charged pneumatic (PCP), single-cock pneumatic (10 meter match gun) or CO2 airgun, you can use any scope on our site.
2. If you shoot a spring airgun, you will need to choose a scope that matches the recoil rating of your airgun.

Ultimately, there are only two features that make an airgun scope different than a firearm scope. An adjustable objective and optics that are anchored to handle the two way recoil of a spring airgun. Let's look a little closer at these features.

Adjustable Objective
An adjustable objective is a feature that allows the shooter to "focus" for any distance from a very close distance 10 yards or meters to infinity. Most firearm scopes are parallax set for 100 yards or more to accommodate the long distance shooting requirements of a hunting firearm. Airgun scopes, however, must allow the shooter to adjust the parallax to accommodate for shorter airgun distances. This feature is necessary to achieve the maximum accuracy in an airgun.

Anchored Optics
Anchored optics refer to optics that are anchored front and back to handle the forward and backward recoil caused by the mainspring's movement. Recoil in a spring airgun is different than recoil in a firearm in the sense that it isn't only the amount of recoil that matters, but the direction of the recoil as well. Mainsprings cause an airgun to recoil backward and forward while firearms only recoil in a backward direction. It is this two-direction recoil that can cause damage to non-airgun rated scopes.

Scopes designed for firearms have optics anchored to handle the backward movement of the recoil. Airgun scopes require that optics be anchored to handle the two-way recoil generated by the mainspring. But there is a catch to this feature so check our recoil ratings very carefully. Even though a manufacturer may rate a scope for airguns, it may not handle all spring airguns. Some airgun rated scopes are designed to handle only light recoil airguns while others are built to handle the medium and high recoil spring airguns. All rifles shown on our site will show a Recoil Rating of Low, Medium, High or No Recoil. All scopes will also show whether they are made for Low, Medium or High Recoil rifles.