7.62x39 Ammo Price Index

Updated monthly. Latest reading: June 2026.

This index tracks the cheapest 7.62x39 ammo on the market, month by month, and what makes the price move.

We pull the lowest in-stock price per round for the steel-cased imports that feed this caliber, Wolf, Tula, Barnaul and their siblings, across the major price-comparison sites, going back to 2009. That is the best deal available each month, not our price.

7.62x39 Cost Per Round Over Time

We build this series ourselves, aggregating the lowest in-stock price per round listed each month across the major public ammunition price-comparison sites, AmmoEngine, AmmoGrab, Gun.Deals, and AmmoPricesNow among them. One difference from our other calibers: for 7.62x39 the index includes steel-cased imports, because steel-cased imports are this market, Wolf, Tula, Barnaul, and their siblings, the category buyers actually shop.

The series runs from 2009 through June 2026 and is refreshed monthly. Months with no reliable data are left blank rather than estimated.

The spikes on this line are supply as much as demand. Here is what moved it:

• 2009 to 2012, the cheap-import era. 17 to 22 cents a round, decade in, decade out, courtesy of Russian steel case. This is the baseline the caliber never sees again.
• 2013, the AK panic. President Obama's proposed assault-weapons ban named this caliber's rifles too, and the floor nearly tripled to 57 cents before fading as the ban died in the Senate.
• 2017 to 2019, the Trump Slump. Back to 19 cents, one last visit to the import-era baseline.
• 2020 to 2021, the panic. COVID lockdowns, the BLM riots and the defund-the-police summer, then a contested election drove the floor from its 19-cent baseline into the high 50s by early 2021. For any other caliber that spike would be the all-time high. For this one it was only the opening.
• August 2021, the door closes. President Biden's State Department banned new Russian ammunition import permits. Existing permits kept some supply flowing for two more years, a countdown, not a reprieve.
• 2022 to 2026, the era that didn't end. Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent its ammunition plants back to war production, the last permitted imports ran out, and the floor kept climbing past the 2021 panic to its all-time high of 66 cents in March 2024. 7.62x39 is the only caliber on this site whose price never came back down, and it still trades within about 15 percent of that high today.

■ Price rose   ■ Price fell   ■ No change

7.62x39 Search Interest Over Time

Search interest is the demand signal: it measures how many people are looking for 7.62x39, not what it costs. This caliber's search line answers to its supply chain: the spikes mark the moments when Washington or war threatened the imports which feed it. If you compare it against the price line above, it shows something no other caliber shows, a market that stopped waiting for prices to come back down.

• January 2013, the all-time peak: the assault-weapons fight reached the AK too, and this caliber peaked with the rest of the rifle family.
• August 2021, the ban signature: when the Russian import ban was announced, 7.62x39 search interest jumped 167 percent in a month while every other caliber sat flat. No cleaner fingerprint of a supply shock exists anywhere on this site.
• February to March 2022, Russia invades Ukraine: the caliber most exposed to Russian supply spiked again while most calibers barely moved.
• 2026, the surprise U.S. airstrikes on Iran registered here as everywhere, but this caliber's story was already written by then.

Factory Cost vs. Retail Price

This chart tracks what ammunition costs to make: the federal Producer Price Index for small arms ammunition (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), the price manufacturers charge at the factory door, with the retail scramble stripped out. The index's one big move came in late 2007, when lead hit an all-time high and military orders for Iraq and Afghanistan ran the industry's plants at capacity, a genuine cost increase, visible because it impacted the factory's cost of goods directly.

But this caliber tells the index's third story: 7.62x39's price today isn't set by American factory costs or by panic demand. It is set by absence, the Russian production that once fed this market now feeds a war, and no domestic line has replaced it.

For 7.62x39, the price is set by absence, not by demand and not by the cost to build a round.

Background Checks vs. Ammo Demand

This chart adds another piece to the puzzle: how many Americans actually bought a gun, not ammo. Every retail firearm purchase runs through an FBI background check, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation strips out the permit checks and rechecks which states run against existing license holders, leaving the closest public measure of guns actually sold, month by month, back to 2000. This is a look at the buyers of firearms, not ammunition.

That difference is what makes it worth reading against the price and search lines for ammo above: when all three climb together, new buyers are entering the market; when ammo demand surges and NICS background checks barely move, Americans who already own guns are stocking up. Background checks count how many Americans joined the ranks of gun owners; ammunition prices measure how worried the ranks already are. One gauge counts the crowd growing, the other reads its pulse.

For 7.62x39 the background-check line is the control group that proves the supply story. When President Biden's State Department banned new Russian ammunition import permits in August 2021, search interest for this caliber jumped 167 percent in a month, while background checks ran 21 percent below the prior year. Nobody was buying more guns; owners were racing a closing door.

And from 2022 on, the two lines part ways completely: background checks declined for four straight years while 7.62x39 prices climbed. Demand didn't do that. The war did, Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent the factories that fed this caliber back to serving their army, and the cheap-ammo era they powered ended with them.

New buyers move the background-check line; nervous owners move the price line.

How much does a box of 7.62x39 cost right now?

The latest point on the index above is the cheapest advertised price per round this month. A standard 20-round box runs about 20 times that number and a 1,000-round case about 1,000 times it, before shipping. Typical shelf prices run higher, and brass-cased or soft-point hunting loads cost well above the steel-cased range ammo this index tracks.

What is a good price per round for 7.62x39?

Judge it against the line above, but read this caliber's history first. The old 20-cent baseline was built on Russian imports that no longer exist, so prices from before August 2021 are not coming back without a new supply source. A good price today is one near the bottom of the post-ban range, not the pre-ban one.

Why is 7.62x39 so much more expensive than it used to be?

Because its supply line was cut twice. In August 2021, President Biden's State Department banned new permits for Russian ammunition imports, and Russian steel case was the backbone of this market. Existing permits trickled supply through about 2023.

Then Russia's invasion of Ukraine put the factories that once loaded America's cheapest rifle ammo to work feeding a war instead. Demand panics fade; this was supply, and it hasn't come back.

Is steel-cased 7.62x39 safe to shoot?

Steel-cased ammo is what the AK and SKS were designed around, it runs correctly in the rifles this caliber serves. It is generally not reloadable and can wear parts faster in AR-platform rifles chambered for the round, which is one reason brass-cased 7.62x39 exists at a premium. This index tracks the steel-cased market because that is what the overwhelming majority of this caliber's buyers shoot.

More Ammo Price Indexes

Use This Data

Writing about ammo prices? Drop the live 7.62x39 cost-per-round chart onto your site. It refreshes on its own as we publish each month and links back to this index. Free to use with attribution.

<div class="infogram-embed" data-id="_/QrifagyQbUpMkYm3cVdN" data-type="interactive" data-title="7.62x39 Cost Per Round Over Time"></div><script src="https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js" async></script><p>Chart: <a href="https://ammo.com/ammo-prices/7.62x39">7.62x39 Ammo Price Index</a> by Ammo.com</p>