← zeroconsiderations.com

Scope Click Calculator — MOA & MRAD

Shot a group and need to know what to dial? Enter the distance, how far the group landed from your point of aim, and your turret's click value. Works in MOA or MRAD, yards or meters, inches or centimeters — and it shows its math so you can check it against a napkin. Runs entirely in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

The math behind the clicks

Scope adjustments are angles, not distances. A click moves your point of impact by a fixed angle, so the distance it moves the bullet grows with range. That's the whole trick: convert your measured miss into an angle, then divide by your click value.

MOA — minute of angle

One MOA is 1/60 of a degree. At 100 yards that angle covers 1.047 inches; at 200 yards, 2.094 inches; at 50 yards, 0.524 inches. It scales in a straight line with distance. Most American hunting scopes adjust in 1/4-MOA clicks — about a quarter inch per click at 100 yards.

The common shorthand "1 MOA = 1 inch at 100 yards" is close but not exact — the real figure is 4.7% bigger. More on when that matters below.

MRAD — milliradians

A milliradian (mrad, mil) is 1/1000 of a radian: the angle that covers 1/1000 of the distance to the target. That makes the math base-10 clean — 1 mrad is 10 cm at 100 m, or 3.6 inches at 100 yards. Mil turrets almost always click in 0.1 mrad: 1 cm at 100 m, 0.36 inches at 100 yards.

Neither system is more accurate — they're both just angles. A 1/4-MOA click (0.26" at 100 yd) is actually a bit finer than a 0.1-mrad click (0.36"). Conversion, when you need it: 1 mrad = 3.44 MOA.

The formula

Three steps, any units:

• MOA = offset in inches ÷ (1.047 × distance in yards ÷ 100)
• MRAD = offset in cm ÷ (10 × distance in meters ÷ 100)
• Clicks = that angle ÷ your click value — then dial opposite the miss

Worked examples

MOA, imperial. 100 yards, group centered 2.6" low and 1.3" left, 1/4-MOA turret. Elevation: 2.6 ÷ 1.047 = 2.48 MOA ÷ 0.25 = 9.9 → dial 10 clicks up. Windage: 1.3 ÷ 1.047 = 1.24 MOA ÷ 0.25 = 5.0 → 5 clicks right.

MRAD, metric. 100 meters, group 7 cm high and 3 cm right, 0.1-mrad turret. 7 cm at 100 m is 0.7 mrad → 7 clicks down; 3 cm is 0.3 mrad → 3 clicks left. This is why mil shooters like metric: no long division.

Short range — where people get burned. 25 yards, group 1" low, 1/4-MOA turret. One MOA at 25 yards is only 0.26", so that inch is 3.82 MOA — 15 clicks up, not 4. At a quarter of the distance, the same inch costs four times the clicks.

Common mistakes

• Dialing the wrong direction. The turret arrows tell you which way the impact moves. Group hit low? Dial toward U. Low-left group means up and right. Don't overthink what the reticle or erector is doing internally — trust the arrows.
• Correcting off one shot. A single round tells you almost nothing — normal dispersion can put it an inch from where the rifle actually points. Shoot 3–5, correct off the group's center, then confirm.
• Mixing MOA and MRAD. Plenty of older and budget scopes pair a mil-dot reticle with MOA turrets. If you measure a miss in mils through the glass and dial MOA clicks, you'll be off by a factor of 3.44. Know which units your reticle and your turret each speak.
• Treating 1 MOA as exactly 1 inch. Fine for small corrections at 100 yards. But the shorthand overstates every correction by about 4.7% — by the time a fix needs ten clicks, you're half a click over. Use 1.047 (or this calculator) when the correction is big.
• Forgetting the distance scaling at 25 or 50 yards. The most common zeroing-day error: someone dials 4 clicks per inch at 25 yards because that's the 100-yard number, then wonders why the group barely moved. See the worked example above — it's 15.
• A printer that scaled your target. If you zero on a printed grid and your printer was set to "fit to page," every square is a lie. Print at 100% and measure the calibration bar — our free targets carry a 1-inch and 50 mm ruler for exactly this check.

Or skip the tape measure entirely

This calculator still assumes you've measured the group offset by hand — walking downrange with a ruler, eyeballing the group center, keeping the tape square to the aim point. That measuring step is where most of the error lives.

Zero Considerations does the whole chain from a photo. Print one of the free targets — the four coded corner markers let the app set the photo's true scale and correct camera tilt and perspective, so a hasty off-angle phone shot still measures straight. Photograph the target before and after your string: the app finds the bullet holes, computes the group center, and converts the offset into clicks for your optic's actual click value from its preset catalog. From there it keeps going — truing your muzzle velocity from observed drop, building DOPE cards, and showing holdovers on 301 reticles drawn from published manufacturer subtension data. $9.99 once, no subscription, no account; it runs at the bench with no signal, and the only network call in the app is the optional weather auto-fill you tap.

It never certifies a zero, and neither should you — the app advises a confirmation group after every correction, same as this page does.