If you’re trying to decide on the right or the best accessories and hardware for your AR platform, then you certainly have some decisions to make. There is no shortage of options, and even once you decide on the type of rail or sight or scope that you want, you need to make sure that it will work easily with all of the other elements of your AR-15 rail system.

In today’s blog, the team at RailScales® will try to help shed a little light on how the KeyMod AR rail system and the Picatinny AR rail system, or Pic rails, shape up against each other. Please keep in mind, this isn’t a comprehensive deep dive into metrics and which specific pieces of elite hardware can be utilized with each, nor is it an attempt to anoint a winner.

Our goal is to provide you with helpful information and hopefully stimulate some good old fashioned critical thinking about which one you might prefer for your specific needs. Let’s get started.

Picatinny Rails

Let’s start with the rail system that really ignited the customization trend in American AR-15 culture — the Picatinny rail system developed by Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey starting in 1992.

Picatinny rails were developed at the request of the US military when upper echelon officials were dissatisfied with what was available on the commercial market. It essentially is a re-design and re-scale of the systems being used on the 105 mm Howitzer at the time.

Pic rails offer the ability to be positioned at all for cardinals points of the clock face: three, six, nine, and twelve. They, in our opinion, perform best when used for mounting accuracy critical, heavier-weight elements such as long-range scopes — which was the purpose for which they were designed.

Picatinny rails offer a wide locking slot, and more consistent spacing between slots than previous rails had been able to provide. Although it didn’t face much competition until the mid-2000s, the Pic rail has remained a popular favorite among sport and tactical shooters.

The one complaint that you may hear consistently about Picatinny rails is that they are heavier than most of the other AR rail systems on the market. Despite the fact that you can purchase smaller handguards and smaller rails to reduce the weight, the reputation continues to haunt them.

KeyMod Rails

KeyMod rails were developed in 2008 as a collaboration between VLOTR Weapons Systems and Noveske Rifleworks. Despite the early release of a similar, but different, model of AR rail system by Noveske during the development, KeyMod has become one of the most successful modern AR rail system brands you can find.

KeyMod offers a lighter weight option that remains fixed in the 12 o’clock position and provides for superior barrel venting. KeyMod’s real strength is in the fact that it is an open-source design. Anyone anywhere can produce accessories for the KeyMod AR rail system without having to pay a penny to VLOTR.

This has led to the proliferation of accessories and gives the KeyMod the distinct advantage of not requiring adapters (adapters allow for manufacturers to get their equipment onto other companies’ rails without having to pay them anything), and thereby doing a great job of keeping weight down as more and more accessories are added.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both of these AR rail systems offer elite quality, durability, and flexibility when it comes to what they can endure and what you can mount to them. In that regard, we would suggest that these rails are more or less equal.

The primary difference, in terms of determining the value to a shooter, comes down to what is more important to them: weight or the ability to mount serious optics for long-range shooting and precision. For the weight, the KeyMod AR rail system is likely the better choice. For advanced optics and long-range scopes, it’s the Pic rail.

Find The KeyMod Accessories You’re Looking For From RailScales®

RailScales® is an Oklahoma-based firearms accessory design and engineering company that produces high-quality hand stops, sights, foregrips, and, of course, the nationally famous RailScales® for the KeyMod and M-LOK AR rail systems. We chose to focus on these because we believe that using fewer materials or lighter weight, yet superior design and durability, is good for us, good for our customers, and good for our natural resources.

Visit us online today and shop our entire collection of gold-standard AR rail system accessories, and find out just what has made RailScales® rail covers so successful since we launched in 2015.