Best AR-22 Accessories & Upgrades 2026

Identify which of the three AR-22 configurations you own before you buy anything, because the parts lists barely overlap. A conversion kit lives inside a centerfire upper. A dedicated upper replaces that upper entirely. A purpose-built rimfire rifle is its own machine with its own receiver, magazines, and internals.

The conversion route is the one most AR owners take first. You pull the 5.56 bolt carrier group out of a compatible upper, drop in the rimfire assembly, and feed it from a magazine that sits in the standard magazine well. The rifle keeps its centerfire barrel, which is the compromise: the host bore and its twist rate were chosen for 5.56, not for .22 LR, and no optic or trigger fixes that. What you get is trigger time, low-recoil drills, and ammunition that costs a fraction of 5.56. For the centerfire side of the same rifle, our AR-15 accessories guide covers the parts that are not rimfire-system-specific.

The dedicated route replaces the upper. Instead of a chamber adapter sitting in a centerfire chamber, a dedicated bolt uses a barrel collar that indexes on a real .22 LR barrel. That is the mechanical difference worth understanding, because it decides which bolts, charging handles, and barrels are compatible with what you own. You can also start with a conversion kit and move to a dedicated setup later: CMMG documents replacing the chamber adapter with the correct barrel collar to turn a conversion assembly into a dedicated bolt group.

Buy the conversion kit if you want cheap trigger time on the AR you already own, and buy the dedicated upper if you want the rifle to shoot like a rimfire rifle. The $189.99 CMMG Bravo kit is the whole rimfire system in a box for the price of a decent red dot, and the $759.50 BoreBuddy Apogee Match upper is several times that and worth it when groups matter.

Two cautions on the conversion side. CMMG does not guarantee fit or function in .223 Wylde chambers, so a Wylde upper is not the host to build this around. And the accuracy ceiling is the barrel: the host bore and twist stay centerfire, so a conversion kit gives up group size to a dedicated .22 LR barrel no matter what ammunition you feed it.

On the dedicated side, the decision is complete upper versus assembling one. The $639.99 CMMG Banshee Mk4 is the compact answer, a 4.5-inch traditional-blowback upper with a 1:16 barrel, 1/2x28 threads, its own bolt group, and a ZEROED ambidextrous charging handle in a 2.2-pound package that CMMG specifies for standard AR-15 lower groups. That barrel length is a deliberate short-range choice, not a general-purpose trainer. If you would rather build than buy, the $179.50 BoreBuddy bolt group and the $325 Apogee Match barrel are the two halves that matter: the Gen 2 collar on the bolt fits dedicated BoreBuddy, CMMG, Right To Bear, and PSA-pattern rimfire barrels, and the barrel is 416R stainless with a Bentz chamber, an 11-degree crown, and a 1:12 twist BoreBuddy rates through 60-grain bullets. A Bentz chamber is cut for accuracy, so it rewards clean ammunition and a maintenance habit in a semi-automatic gun.

Magazines are the cheapest upgrade on an AR-22 and the one that decides how the gun behaves at the end of a string. The $30.99 CMMG 22ARC Gen 2 is the factory 25-rounder, listed by CMMG for its .22 LR conversion kits and for Mk4 and mil-spec AR-15 lowers. The $39.99 BoreBuddy KRISS 25-rounder drops into a standard AR magazine well without an adapter and can operate a compatible .22 LR bolt catch after the last round, which is the one thing a rimfire AR usually cannot do.

Buy magazines in quantity before you buy anything else. Rimfire is what you shoot when you want volume, and reloading two magazines all afternoon is how a trainer stops getting used. Six magazines is the working floor for range and drill work, ten if the gun is doubling as a class rifle. Both 25-round bodies here are longer than the 10-round versions, so keep a short magazine on hand for bench and prone work where a long body drags. Local capacity rules apply before any of that.

Bolt hold-open is the detail buyers get wrong. The KRISS magazine can work the catch, but a standard AR bolt catch is not the part that engages it: making the lower's bolt release work on a rimfire build takes a separate compatible .22 LR bolt catch. Buy the magazine for capacity and magazine-well fit; add the catch when true last-round hold-open is the goal. Neither magazine is a factory part for a purpose-built rifle such as the M&P15-22, so match the magazine to the exact host.

Charging handles are the other place a rimfire build differs from a centerfire one. The $99.99 BoreBuddy premium ambidextrous handle has a rimfire-specific channel shaped to reduce cases lodging above the bolt, and it fits BoreBuddy, CMMG, Right To Bear, and PSA-style dedicated AR-22 bolts. BoreBuddy states it is not compatible with conversion kits, so conversion-kit owners should leave the centerfire handle in place and put the money into magazines instead. Once the handle is on a dedicated upper, keep it there; it is not a centerfire part.

These three categories are the parts an AR-22 borrows straight from a normal AR build, and they are the ones most likely to carry across host configurations. A trigger fits the lower, an optic clamps to the rail, and a suppressor threads to the muzzle, so none of them depend on the rimfire bolt and barrel interface that divides the rest of the guide. Each still answers to its own interface: the lower it drops into, the rail it clamps to, and the muzzle threads it needs.

The $109.30 RISE Armament Rave 140 is the trigger pick for a standard mil-spec AR lower: a single-stage cassette with a 3.5-pound pull, a short reset, and anti-walk pins in the box. A rimfire trainer is exactly where a lighter, cleaner break earns its keep, because there is no recoil to hide a bad press. Note the two limits. A 3.5-pound pull is lighter than mil-spec, which is a poor match for a new shooter's first rifle, and rimfire ignition depends on hammer energy, so function-test any trigger swap for light strikes before trusting it. RISE lists the Rave 140 as compatible with the M&P15-22 as well as standard AR lowers. For the full field of conventional AR triggers and how to install one, see our AR trigger guide. Forced-reset triggers and forced-reset selectors are a different subject with different fitment and legal considerations; those live in the AR-22 FRT build guide and are out of scope here.

For glass, the $128.79 SIG Sauer Romeo 5 Gen 2 is the right amount of optic for this rifle. A 2 MOA dot in a 20mm window suits the drills a rimfire AR is actually used for, close steel, reactive targets, and informal practice, and motion-activated illumination means the dot is live when you pick the rifle up. The compact body matters more here than on a centerfire gun: a light rimfire upper goes top-heavy fast under a full-size optic. Magnification is the wrong answer unless you are shooting small targets past the distance a dot covers, and no optic corrects the accuracy limits of a conversion kit firing through a centerfire barrel. Once it is mounted, our optic zeroing guide covers getting it on paper.

Suppressed .22 is the best argument for owning a rimfire AR at all, and both picks here are direct-thread 1/2x28, which is the thread on the CMMG Banshee upper and the BoreBuddy Apogee Match barrel. The $296.65 SilencerCo Sparrow 22 is the value pick at 5.08 inches and 6.5 ounces, a stainless monocore that comes apart for cleaning; its monocore design can have a sharper first-round tone than a stacked-baffle can. The $459 Dead Air Mask HD costs more and gives you 17-4 stainless user-serviceable baffles at 5.1 inches and 6.6 ounces, rated from .22 LR through .17 HMR and 5.7x28mm. Serviceability is not a luxury feature on a rimfire can: unjacketed lead and dirty powder pack a .22 suppressor faster than any centerfire host, and a can you cannot open is a can that gets heavier every range trip. Both add just over five inches to the muzzle, which is worth checking against a 16-inch-barrel build before you commit. Suppressor purchase and possession are governed by federal law and by state law, so confirm the current rules where you live; our .22 suppressor guide compares the wider rimfire field and walks the buying process.