Compare distributors before you open an account

Opening a new distributor account takes paperwork, a credit application and usually a few weeks. Before you do it, you want to know one thing. Will this account get me products I can't already get from the ones I have?

Our distributor pages answer that with numbers. They're free, and you don't need an account to use them.

Start at the distributor list

/distributors lists every distributor we sync, with how many distinct products each carries. A product counts once, even if a distributor lists it under several SKUs.

Each card links to that distributor's own page.

One distributor's page

Each distributor page shows:

• Products, the number of distinct products in their catalog right now
• Freshness, how recently we last synced them
• Brands they list the most of, linked to that brand's page
• What they list most of, their eight biggest categories
• How they overlap the other distributors, a table of how many products they share with each of the others, and how many they carry that the other one doesn't
• What the distributor says about itself, and the steps to open an account with them

The categories and brands are counted after we clean up each distributor's naming. A category that arrives as "rifles,tactical_rifles" goes in the same bucket as every other distributor's firearms, and "S&W" and "Smith & Wesson" count as one brand. Without that, you'd be comparing labels, not catalogs.

Put two side by side

The compare pages, like RSR vs Sports South, put two distributors next to each other. You get the size of each catalog, how many products they both carry, how many only one of them has, and which categories they share.

That's the page to read before opening a second account. As of late September 2026, for example, RSR and Sports South shared about 20,000 products. Sports South carried roughly 38,700 that RSR didn't, and RSR had about 9,700 that Sports South didn't. If you already buy from one of them, those "only at" numbers are what a second account adds.

The "only at" figure is always between the two distributors on the page. A product only at Sports South, compared with RSR, might still be at Chattanooga. That's why every pair has its own page.

There's also a comparison table of every distributor on one page, in alphabetical order. We don't rank them.

Two distributors show less

Davidson's and Lipsey's share their catalog figures only with their own account holders, not on a public page. So on their pages, and on any compare page that includes one of them, you'll see a note where the numbers would be. The rest of the page, including how to open an account with them, is still there.

How fresh the numbers are

Catalog sizes and category counts come from the same feeds as your search results and update automatically through the day. Overlap numbers are refreshed at least once a day. The numbers on these pages move a little every day as distributors add and drop products.

What these pages don't tell you

They don't compare prices. Which distributor is cheapest changes product by product and day by day, and a list page can't keep up with it. That's what search is for.

They also can't tell you how a distributor treats its dealers: fill rates, how fast they ship, how good your rep is. Ask around for that.

Try it

Start at /distributors, open the distributor you're thinking about, and check its overlap table against the ones you already buy from.

Want to see prices too? Try the full Pro+ plan free for 7 days. No credit card needed until your trial ends.