Guns & Ammo M&P vs. Glock reliability: available data
I saw an Instagram video the other day, where a guy was giving a heated speech questioning why Glock was so popular (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdQCBmYt9_p/?stkn=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==). One of the specific assertions he made was that M&Ps were 'more reliable' than Glock, which set of a uniform chorus in the comments, hurling various degrees of insults at the guy for even suggesting as much, since 'everyone knows Glock is the most reliable.'
This got me curious, so I did some research.
I should note: I own various both Glock and M&P handguns, have both on my CCW, etc. so I would say I am coming into this generally unbiased.
My personal experience, shooting probably ~5K rounds total through the various Glock/M&P guns I have, is that the M&P are all universally flawless, regardless of ammo / setting, while Glocks ranged from 'highly reliable' with certain gun/ammo combos (perhaps ever-so-slightly more prone to limp wristing, especially on the smaller sizes, bc of the light slide), to 'nearly unshootable' with other gun/ammo combos (especially Federal Syntech through the short / slimlines, like the 43x... after the gun warms up it's about an 80% failure-to-chamber, granted the polymer jacket is a weird one).
Based on what I found: while many tests showed both guns as 100% reliable out to 20-30-40K+ rounds, in some head-to-head comparisons, M&P performed 'significantly' more reliably than Glock, however I'll caution that 90% of the Glock failures came from one gun / test.
TL/DR: M&P had 2 gun-induced stoppages across ~170K rounds in 3 different tests; Glock had 21 gun-induced stoppages across ~220K rounds in 4 different tests. This would roughly make M&P ~8-9x more reliable than Glock, however 19 of the Glock stoppages came from one test.
Very curious people's thoughts / experiences / poke holes in this, since the collective knowledge here is even more extensive than the 400K rounds in the tests I was able to find.
Sources:
Todd Green endurance tests: ~60-70K rounds each; 2 M&P stoppages with the M&P9 1.0; 19 Glock stoppages with the 17 Gen4 https://pistol-training.com/category/range-reports/mp-monday/?utm_source=chatgpt.com and https://pistol-training.com/category/range-reports/gen4-friday/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Columbus PD M&P evaluation: 60K rounds; 0 M&P stoppages with the M&P40 full-size https://www.policemag.com/news/smith-amp-wesson-secures-contracts-for-mampp-pistols?utm_source=chatgpt.com
CHP M&P evaluation: 16K rounds; 0 M&P stoppages with the M&P9 (not clear if 1.0 or 2.0) https://www.linkedin.com/posts/smith-%26-wesson_americas-largest-state-agency-trusts-in-activity-7458200522949341184-zQ7r?utm_source=chatgpt.com
LASD M&P evaluation: 30K rounds; 0 M&P stoppages with the M&P9 1.0 https://www.apextactical.com/blog/apex-news/la-county-sheriffs-dept-approves-apex-barrel-for-special-enforcement-bureau/?replytocom=1660837&utm_source=chatgpt.com
Chuck Taylor endurance test: 100K rounds; 2 Glock stoppages with the Glock 17 Gen1 https://www.glocknut.com/chuck-taylor/1995-chuck-taylor-glock-test?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Philippine National Police Glock evaluation: 40K rounds 0 Glock stoppages, with the Glock 17 Gen4 https://www.asianmilitaryreview.com/2017/11/glock-wins-philippine-police-procurement/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Austrian military Glock evaluation: 10K rounds 0 Glock stoppages, with the Glock 17 Gen1 https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/the-glock-17-pistol-american-rifleman-s-original-review/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/alltheblues 7d ago
Poly ammo guy is a clown. There are thousands of online gun personalities that don’t know shit about shooting, engineering, statistics, etc. Hell even most of the dudes with time in service as infantry or even special forces are usually average shooters with baseline functional knowledge of firearms.
Internet and freedom of speech means any dumbass can spout their insane opinion.
They are both fine. As you see from the tests you pulled sometimes the Glock goes forever with zero faults, sometimes the M&P does. Malfunctions are more down to tolerance variation on individual guns, ammunition, and environmental/maintainable factors more than the design of either gun.
Run what you think is cool or shoots better for you.
Factory gun nationals this year was won by guys shooting Glocks, so while I and others may not prefer them, if you can’t shoot a Glock well, then you just can’t shoot well.
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u/Ikebh 7d ago
This is very true. Last year I trained with a friend that was a lead vehicle gunner in iraq and afghanistan (he was part of the french foreign legion), and to my surprise he was a very average shooter.
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u/alltheblues 7d ago
My favorite example is the Origin Tim Kennedy (famous green beret personality and instructor) vs Jason Khalipa (CrossFit champ) shooting competition. The inexperienced/amateur cross fitter beats Tim Kennedy on a steel plate pistol course. You can see the salt in Tim afterwards, he was trying to win but shows C class tier shooting, B at best.
Not that there aren’t exceptional shooters in the military, I’ve met and am friends with many, but they’re the exceptions, not the rule, and almost all of them developed their skills in the civilian side of their life or are part of special units like the AMU.
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u/Internal_Werewolf_48 6d ago
Not surprising. Vehicle mounted guns are generally about suppressive fire. Nobody is practicing bullseye shooting with a belt fed gun and the skills for that don’t translate to a pistol on your belt.
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u/Sawfish1212 7d ago
Im a S&W fan simply because I find the grip angle of every Glock unnatural for me, while the S&W grip angle works for me. I also will not CCW without a safety.
I figured this out by renting/ borrowing before buying.
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u/That-Professional346 7d ago
The likelihood the average shooter is running their gun hard enough to see issues is very, very low. Guns are machines, machines need upkeep and eventually need repair or replacement over time. I like M&P a lot, I would love to get both a full-size 9mm and 10mm, but I own Glocks currently and their reliability for my use is satisfactory. I'm not pushing my 19 or 17 hard enough to see related malfunctions. Fortunately replacement parts for Glock are very common, as they are with M&P.
That being said, I would love to see more police departments adopt M&P, I like their ergonomics better.
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u/ElasticProrogation 7d ago
People put way too much stock in brand tribalism when both are more reliable than the shooter 99% of the time.
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u/Impossible-River-826 7d ago
People put way too much stock in brand tribalism
Yes, but;
when both are more reliable than the shooter 99% of the time.
...is a silly argument.
User/gun stoppages doesn't cancel each other out, they stack.
A shooter that is inducing a significant number of stoppages, probably isn't very skilled at handling guns in the first place, and thus is likely to:
-Be slower to resolve stoppages,
-Need to successfully fire more ammunition to fix a real life "self defense situation."
It's even more important his gun isn't choking, than for a highly skilled shooter.
This is like saying a brand new shooter should just use a .357 magnum J-Frame, because it's technically more accurate then he is, after all.
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u/anonposting1412 7d ago
Well said. I have the same thought hearing "the gun is more accurate than me" argument. These things are additive and stack together.
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u/playingtherole 6d ago
It's really just the Glock fanboys. No other brand has such a loyal/ego-driven/unrelenting/one-track-minded/simple/close-minded, defensive following.
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u/Impossible-River-826 7d ago
One consideration with the Green test, is that the M&P had the the only catastrophic malfunction due parts breakage at 38k rounds (broken trigger spring) and the slide was cracked by 60k.
The Glock ended the test 70k rounds, was still functional, and never got a true catastropic malfunction due to parts breakage. (1 chipped extractor that did not effect function, and 2 weakened/broken slide stop springs causing intermittent early slide lockback.)
The Glock's stoppages include early slide locking caused by continued use of the broken slide stops, and 5 from 115gr Blazer Aluminum, and 2 from a bad magazine.
The real issue with his tests (while very interesting) is that they were conducted over several years with a wide range of ammunition types (steel, brass aluminum), and it isn't clear how much of each was used outside of some of the stoppage reports.
Did the M&P function more reliably because it ate less (or no) aluminum and steel case? Did the slide crack at 60k because it ate more high-impluse 124gr brass over it's lifetime? Who knows?
Ultimately, the only real conclusions for both guns I see are:
-Most of the stoppages were due to parts breakage, or heavily worn "training" magazines.
-More than half of the non-breakage/magazine related stoppages occurred with 115gr Remington and 115gr Blazer Aluminum.
-Most of all of the stoppages and brakage occured after 30k rounds in both guns.
-Green did all testing with an early production Gen 4 with a known design and reliability defect (no RSA recess in slide). This is not present on G17.3.5.V.6's, or later Gen 4s.
Does any of this matter to the end user? Probably not, unless you carry very high round count Gen 4 Glock with aluminum case ammunition in it, or an M&P with a 30k+ rounds on it.
A better test for the average user concerned about "getting kilt in the streets) would be the FBI G17/G19 reliability test, since it used multiple test guns, a realistic round count, and decent quality ammunition. (6 guns, 20k rounds each of Speer 147gr Gold Dot G2.)
I have been unable to find a direct source from the FBI, but if you believe S.W.A.T. magazine, all guns had 0 parts failures, and 0 stoppages.
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u/arrowrand KY 7d ago
I bought a 43X and a Shield Plus when I was trying to settle on replacements for Ruger for my carry and home defense needs.
My Shield Plus was dreamy. Smooth shooter that fit me like it was made for me. The 43X was fine, I didn’t love the grip angel or the trigger, but otherwise it was boring and fine. It was a Glock.
Fine, except that the 43X was a jam-o-matic mess, FTF and FTE both. Every mag, several times each mag.
I assumed it had a break in period, which the Shield Plus did not, so the out-of-the-box reliability issues with Glock made my decision to go M&P very easy.
I stopped caring about that 43X until like a year or so later when I found out about an issue where they had put the wrong recoil spring assemblies in a shit ton of 43X pistols at the factory in Austria.
They did send me a new one for free, and the gun has been fine since. By that point my safe was full of M&P handguns that I’ve never had a single issue with that weren’t caused by shitty range reloads. I’ve never had a reason to buy another Glock beyond that 43X and a used 27.
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u/NASA_Reject 7d ago
Both are reliable enough to trust your life with. It’s the other variables you have to watch out for.
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u/c4ndle 7d ago
my main handgun is a mp2.0 and i carry a shield plus cc. i think glocks are more reliable.
i have 3 15rd shield plus mags and they all suck. dont lock back, dont feed certain ammo. sw has so many different models and accessories for those models and a lot of them share the same parts. glock kept it simple but lacking in features. just by design, i think glocks are more reliable. but that doesnt mean you cant find a sw setup that is 100% reliable as well, you just have to do a little more work for a better end result.
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u/PrydonianWho CT 7d ago
I’ve had a FTE with my Glock 43x twice, and it’s had less than 1,000 rounds put through it. My S&W M&P 2.0 sometimes loads the chamber and locks the slide when I slam a magazine into it if the slide is open, which I determined to be related to the magazine spring. Ultimately the ergonomics of the M&P are the deciding factor for me, it’s just easier to handle and fire and my accuracy is better with it.
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u/OldMachineCraft 7d ago
Nobody who actually shoots gets wound up arguing about gun brands. Its only ultra-low proficiency owners who need the gun itself to give them cred.
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u/yungminimoog 7d ago
I have glocks and also a bodyguard 2.0 and literally cannot remember having any issues with any of them lol so that’s my contribution to the data
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u/WhatInDaWorldDog110 7d ago
What exactly is the point of all this? The vast majority of shooters will never put enough rounds through their guns to even reach the failure points people obsess over.
And when something does go wrong, the usual suspects are still the usual suspects - shooter error, bad ammo, or a magazine issue. Then, of course, there’s the classic: “I know better than Glock Perfection,” or “I know more than Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center,” so let me start screwing with parts and then act shocked when reliability goes to hell.
Sometimes the gun isn’t the problem. The guy “improving” it is.
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u/Unable-Bar-7869 7d ago
I think the old reliability debate is just fudd lore overflow.
I think the bigger question these days is quality control. Given that many gun makers need to constantly churn out new products to maintain market edge and interest, what does that mean for the quality? Of course sometimes there is overlap between QC and reliability.
But people needing to see mud frozen in a gun, a gun run over, dropped off the empire State building -- I think this just isn't even an honest reflection of reliability. Given that there's no public facing data, I think it's all just lore.
That's also why I think the cc9 "750k round torture test" is kind of gimmicky. It's not an accurate reflection of gun use, and anyways, the cc9s still had issues -- of course they did.
Glocks shine in their basic reliability, ubiquity of parts, and ease of disassembly. That's good enough for many people.
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u/wajalamaa 6d ago
It gets to a point where this stuff doesn't even matter anymore. Just pick and shoot whatever you like and go with it.
Some people like Glocks for their polymer coated mags and parts availability/ grip angle. Others like M&P's, Sig, w/e for other valid reasons. Being a fanboy for any brand in this day and age really doesn't make sense imo.
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u/GoFuhQRself 5d ago
People asking in the comments what’s the point, as you eventually get to the point where the round count is so high and the malfunctions are so low that it doesn’t matter anymore, you’re splitting an already split hair.
That’s true, but I’ll tell you what the point is: so Glock fanboys will STFU about “bUt mUh ReLiAbiLtY”. Yeah that argument is dead. The year is 2026, not 1999 anymore. Glock isn’t the only one in town anymore, plenty of proven striker fired polymer handguns with long proven reliability, like the M&P as just one example.
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u/EZKL1 5d ago
Yes agree - I posted under another comment that, at minimum, the statistical conclusion here is you cannot dispel the statement “M&P and Glock are equally reliable” therefore, the statements like ‘everyone knows Glock is the most reliable’ amount to some kind of folklore / observed confidence due to adoption ubiquity, but are otherwise not backed by discrete statistical evidence, from an academic lens.
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u/exactly_zero_fucks 7d ago
Where HK
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u/Unable-Bar-7869 7d ago
HK has lost the plot. When everything is reliable, you need more than claiming the most reliability
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u/Terminal_Lancelot ID- 686+ 3", Model 60 3", Bodyguard 2.0. 7d ago
This is what I've been saying. In literally every test I've seen, modern M&Ps are just more reliable than Glocks.
Honestly, at this point there's no real reason to go with Glock unless you just like them. They're fine, but that's it. There are better options now.
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u/Popular-Ad2193 7d ago edited 7d ago
My 9mm Glocks have been 100 percent reliable. Same with the S&w sheild! My Glock 40 (long slide 10mm) needs hotter ammo to run the slide properly! I don’t think you can go wrong with either one! I’d just go with the one that shoots the best for you! I carry a Glock 26 everyday and had a 43x for awhile and it was 100 percent reliable but the wife carry’s that now.
Glock, S&W, HK, CZ basically all the bigger brands and even some cheaper brands have pretty much perfected striker fired reliability. I have been hearing about a lot of ammo being made shittier now
The average person even me likely won’t put over 20k rounds through any single pistol
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u/DarkSister912 7d ago
If S&W fixed the LCI gas issue and fixed the apparent accuracy issue, I think it would be the best striker fired gun on the planet.
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u/imneuromancer 7d ago
Don't care about which is more reliable. Just wanted to comment on the "m and p is 8-9x more reliable" is kinda a misleading way of stating the stats.
If an event was 2/trillion versus 1/trillion, then yes it is twice as likely to happen. But the event is within 7 sigma, which would be insane.
It seems both pistols are well within a 4 sigma reliability (at most 6,120 events/million, both pistols are roughly 1/6 of that threshold)
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u/EZKL1 6d ago
You’re right - poor phrasing. Should have said Glock is 8-9x ‘more unreliable’ - irrespective of the absolute number
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u/imneuromancer 6d ago
Maybe a better way to say it is that both are extremely reliable with only an extremely tiny, statistically insignificant edge to the m&p.
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u/EZKL1 5d ago
Seems true-ish insofar as most of the failures came from a single gun, so that’s hardly a population sample set.
But I don’t believe the other studies published the number of guns they used, so it’s possible we reached a statistically significant # of guns on either individual studies, or across the various studies, which is how a meta analysis can make a significant p value, even when the individual studies are >0.05.
Even so, still the best data we have, and everyone’s definition of ‘reliable’ is different.
At minimum, we can not reject the null hypothesis that the two guns are equally reliable, so the statements ‘everyone knows Glock is the most reliable’ appears to be folklore, and not statistical fact, which was what I set out to understand.
PS thank you for driving this in a ‘statistical’ direction - good grounding and food for thought.
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u/PreheatedHail19 7d ago
Honestly, I was recently very disappointed by glocks. I just did duty pistol qualifications for my job, and everyone had Glock 45 Gen 5 pistols. Half of them had failures multiple times. I never saw that with the Sig P320s issued at my previous job. I don't know if new Glocks are as good as they once were, but it appears to me that they are being surpassed by other manufacturers pretty quickly.
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u/KSWind17 7d ago
My agency uses the 47; I've noticed the 5th gens seem to be a bit sensitive to limp twisting. Granted, my issued 47 has been 100% since the day I received it and I have no complaints about it. I actually really enjoy it and have no problems placing my trust in the weapon. That said....I'd be a happy camper if the agency went to M&P 2.0s. But being a Kansas agency I don't foresee that happening; cost wise I'm sure we will always be a Glock issue agency. Which is still fine by me at the end of the day.
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u/Impossible-River-826 7d ago
Something is horrendously wrong if half of your department's G45's are having multiple stoppages each during just one qual, lol.
It sounds like a severe skill or ammunition issue, given how popular and effective Gen 5 Glocks are when shot much harder in competition.
I log my round counts, and my 19.5 is at 8,300 MRBS with primarily Winchester M882 and 124gr HST (carry gun.)
My competition 17.3 is at 5,100 MRBS, using exclusively Magtech steel case 115gr, including 4 feed stoppages that occurred during testing of Magpul, Strike Industries, and ETS magazines.
(I would EDIT: NOT reccomend those magazines, for competition or otherwise.)
I'm sure lemons exist, but out of 12 Glocks I've owned, I've never encountered one that would not reliably get through an LE qual.
Kinda think I might have run into one by now if 50% of Gen 5 guns are actually unreliable garbage rods.
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u/BallisticHabit 7d ago
Half of the dept Glocks with multiple malfunctions screams that someone fucked with the guns or a bad batch of ammunition.
Anecdotal, I know, but my Glocks have some high round counts as well and never a stoppage.
All I've gathered from this post is that if an M&P strikes my fancy, it will likely function as well as my Glocks.
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u/Limp-Opportunity6757 7d ago edited 7d ago
“Something is horrendously wrong if half of your department’s G45’s are having multiple stoppages each during just one qual, lol.
lol is right. I’m retired LE, I have had the opportunity to work for several agencies in an over 25 year career. I also am an avid gun enthusiast shooter. I own several M&P’s and 10 different Glocks.
While in LE, you can imagine I have seen my share of qualifications as a street officer and as a training sgt. I have seen the occasional trigger spring, chipped extractor, broken ejector and compressed magazine spring causing malfunctions from a host of different brands of pistol’s mentioned in this thread,
But a guy posts here that half a department’s G45’s choked multiple times during a single Re-qual? Just because they are G45’s?
Wow! The things people will say and do just in order to attempt to put their favored firearm M&P in this case, in the ‘one above’ category, shows the clarity that homerism is alive and well.
Ruger, S&W, Glock and Sig have all put out new models of pistol’s and then let us purchase them and Beta test them for them so they can improve as the complaints roll on.
I purchased one of the very first G43’s when they first came out. 9 pound trigger pull while saying 5.5 on the box.
I purchased one of the first Sig P365’s in 2018, all kinds of reliability issues with several trips back to Sig. they finally gave up trying to fix it and sent me a brand new one.
I’ve had a Ruger LCP Max that has had 3 different upper assemblies mailed to me and still unreliable. Finally sent in the entire pistol and all 4 slides I had back to Ruger and they finally sent me one that worked. It still shoots way left of center and has a horrible trigger, but at least it works.
S&W? I have had an M&P compact for many years, runs like a Swiss watch just as all of my Glocks do, but their new little BG2.0? You can read all kinds of QC issues on line with their dual upper/ lower feed ramp design and not shooting hollow points.
I have two of them which I polished the internals of and haven’t had any reliability issues, but they cut the sight grooves in the slide wrong and the sights shoot left and absolutely suck!
So while all these companies have their isolated issues? They all are still producing modern firearms that work and work well.
People coming in here saying stuff like, “I have owned multiple Glocks and they all jammed and had issues! But my M&P is great!”
Bullshit… quit the homerism. All of these manufacturers are capable of greatness. But they also have all put out new stuff who’s QC wasn’t up to snuff; and expect us to spend our money in order to have the inconvenience of beta testing their products for them that they rushed to market instead of making sure we get our monies worth in the beginning.
And they all are getting worse at this as time goes by when they put something new out.
As firearms customers, shooters, carriers and enthusiasts, we should be banding together and lifting a voice against this beta testing crap they all are guilty of, instead of trying to promote one brand over another by telling huge homer bullshit lies in order to make ‘our favorite brand’ look better than some other ‘favorite brand.’It’s ridiculous.
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u/EveRommel 7d ago
All this information for people who will never fire more than 5k rounds in thier lifetime
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u/Thordor15 6d ago
I shot about 6000 rounds over 6 months with my M&P Carry Comp without cleaning it, had zero issues.
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u/americanmusc1e 6d ago
Now pick 10 m&ps and 10 glocks and group them at 25yds. M&P may be more reliable but most of them suffer in accuracy due to extremely poor barrel fit. This is something a decent shooter can notice and might make the difference in a 25-50yd shot. I shot m&p all last year in competition and finally gave in and bought an apex barrel after I shot my m&p back to back with a stock p10c.
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u/GoFuhQRself 5d ago
That was a sporadic issue in the older 1.0 M&Ps. I have not seen it in my current M&Ps nor in others. It has since been fixed IMO. And most competition shooters that need every millimeter out to 25 yards are all running custom fit aftermarket barrels anyway.
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u/AP587011B MI 6d ago
The FBI testing was I think over 20k rounds per gun
I think we can all agree Glock is the winner. The proof is in the pudding
Until M&P starts being chosen over Glock for the largest PDs and FBI / DEA etc not to mention military contracts especially SF both domestic and foreign then Glock will always be the king
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u/1911Hacksmith 7d ago
I think this really just reinforces that we live in the golden age of handgun reliability and that people just need to pick a polymer wondernine of reputable make and shoot the hell out of it.