IronScout reports observed ammunition prices — what tracked retailers actually listed, over a defined window, measured the same way every day. This page explains exactly how those figures are produced and the limits of what they describe.
Every figure is a price per round (total listed price divided by the round count in the pack), so differently-sized packs compare on the same basis. Prices are the advertised per-round cost before shipping and tax.
The core primitive is the daily-best price: for each caliber and product, IronScout records the lowest observed in-stock price per round on each UTC day. Aggregate statistics are computed over those daily-best observations, not over raw listing snapshots, so a single product refreshed many times in a day cannot skew the market figures.
Market summaries use a trailing 30-day window. Within that window IronScout reports the lowest observed price, the 25th percentile, the per-product median (midpoint), the 95th percentile as the published high, and the count of products and retailers the figures are drawn from.
The median is a per-product midpointacross all listed loads. Because a caliber's catalog often splits between range/practice and defensive/premium loads, where the data supports it we also report each segment's own midpoint so the blended median is not misread as “the typical price.”
Figures are drawn from tracked online retailers and reflect in-stock listings only; coverage varies by retailer and source, and in-store or local pricing is not included. Each caliber page states how many retailers and products its numbers are based on.
Prices are refreshed daily and every page shows the observation date it reflects. The underlying price history is append-only — past observations are never overwritten or deleted, so historical figures stay stable over time.
A summary is only published once a caliber has enough observations to be representative. Where data is thin or a snapshot has gone stale, IronScout withholds the figures rather than showing a number it cannot stand behind.
IronScout reports what the data shows. It does not tell you whether to buy, rank products against each other, assign deal scores or ratings, or predict where prices are headed. Trend figures describe movement already recorded in the history; they are not projections of future prices.
The numbers describe the market as a whole, not any single product or your specific purchase. Every buying decision remains yours.