Escape from Tarkov Ammo Chart: Penetration First

The mechanics, in order

A shot hits either a plate or soft armor. Against a plate, the round’s penetration value is compared to the plate’s armor class; below the threshold the bullet is stopped or partially stopped, and what gets through is heavily reduced. Against soft armor, penetration works the same way with lower classes. So the question is never “how much damage does this round do”. It is “what armor class am I likely to meet, and does this round defeat it”. Against unarmored targets almost anything works, which is why cheap high-damage rounds feel fine until the first armored player.

The four brackets that matter

Low penetration, high damage. Cheap, effective on scavs and unarmored players, close to useless against class 4 and above. These are your default early-wipe rounds. Mid penetration. The general-purpose bracket. Defeats common armor classes, loses effectiveness against the top tier, and is usually the best cost-per-round in the game. High penetration, lower damage. The anti-armor bracket. Fewer shots to break a plate, more shots needed against a naked target — which is why experienced players carry a mix or accept the trade. Fragmentation and special rounds. Bleed, tracer, subsonic. Bleed damage is real but slow, and in a fight decided in two seconds slow damage loses to penetration.

How to actually check

Open the ammo information panel in game and read penetration and damage together, then compare against the armor you looted last raid. That comparison is the whole chart. Community charts are useful for speed but they drift between patches, and the in-game values are the only ones that matter.

The cost rule that saves money

Do not buy the top-penetration round for every magazine. Buy it for the magazine in the gun, and buy cheap rounds for the spare. The expensive round is for the fight you cannot avoid, the cheap one is for the scav you did not need to shoot — see the loot page for why shooting fewer scavs is also a money decision. Recoil and ergonomics change how many of those rounds land, and the recoil page covers that half of the equation.