Best PUBG LMGs, Ranked

Three light machine guns in PUBG, and not one of them does the same job as the others. That's the part people miss. They lump the M249, the DP-28, and the MG3 into one "spray-and-pray" bucket, decide LMGs are clumsy, and never pick one up again. But these three guns sit at completely different points on the spectrum: one's a crate-only belt-fed monster, one's the most slept-on world-spawn gun in the game, and one is a literal suppression switch you flip when you want to make a building unlivable.

So this isn't a "which gun is best" ranking so much as a "which gun for which job" ranking — because the honest answer to which LMG should I run is "the one that matches the fight you're in." We're ranking PUBG: Battlegrounds on PC and console here, which balances separately from PUBG Mobile.

One caveat up front, same as our assault rifle ranking: PUBG has never published official weapon damage numbers. Every per-shot figure floating around is datamined or community-tested, and patches re-tune guns constantly. So we rank on the things you can actually feel and verify — ammo type, magazine size, fire rate, recoil character, and how often the gun spawns — not on a fake-precise damage spreadsheet.

Why LMGs are their own conversation

An LMG isn't a heavier AR. It's a different category with a different reason to exist, and the difference comes down to two numbers: magazine size and sustained fire.

A kitted M416 holds 40 rounds with an extended mag. The DP-28 holds 47 in its drum, and the M249 holds 100 rounds belt-fed. That changes how you fight. An AR forces you to manage reloads in the middle of an exchange — duck, reload, re-peek, re-acquire. An LMG lets you keep the trigger held long enough to keep a doorway, window, or treeline under fire while your squad repositions or pushes. That's suppression, and it's a job ARs do badly because they run dry too fast.

The cost is mobility and ADS speed. LMGs are heavy, they aim-down-sights slower, and several of them want you prone or braced to shoot well. You don't run an LMG to be agile. You run one to win a position you intend to hold.

How we rank LMGs

With only three guns, the tiering is less about a long ladder and more about role fit. The factors that matter, in order:

1. Availability. This is the headliner difference. The M249 and MG3 are crate-only — you find them in care packages, not on the ground. The DP-28 is the only world-spawn LMG, which means it's the only one you can plan a loadout around.
2. Sustained fire and mag size. How long can you keep the trigger held before a reload breaks your suppression? The M249's 100-round belt is the gold standard here.
3. Fire rate and damage class. All three are heavy-caliber guns, but the MG3's selectable fire rate and the M249's raw belt change how much lead you put downrange per second.
4. Control and handling. Recoil character, ADS speed, and whether the gun wants you braced. An LMG you can't keep on target is just a loud way to give away your position.
5. Reload pain. LMG reloads are long. A blown reload at the wrong moment loses the fight you were winning.

The quiet rule with LMGs: availability decides whether the gun matters in your real games at all. The M249 and MG3 are spectacular and you'll hold them a handful of times across hundreds of matches. The DP-28 is the one you can actually build around.

The ranking

Ranked by overall impact-when-held, with availability noted because it changes everything about whether you'll ever hold them:

That ordering is by raw power-when-held. Flip it for practical value and the DP-28 climbs, because a world-spawn gun you find every other match beats two crate beasts you almost never touch. Both readings are true; pick the one that matches your question.

M249: the crate king

The M249 is the closest thing PUBG has to a portable wall of bullets. It's 5.56mm, belt-fed, with a 100-round box magazine — more than double any AR — and it's crate-only, dropping from care packages alongside the AWM, Groza, and friends.

What the M249 buys you is uninterrupted fire. A hundred rounds means you can keep a window, a doorway, or a whole compound entrance suppressed without ever stopping to reload, which is exactly the thing no AR can do. In a squad, that's enormous: you pin a building while your teammates flank, and the enemy literally cannot peek because the wall they'd peek over is being eaten by 5.56. It's also a monster on vehicles and against players caught in the open, where sustained accuracy at range turns into free damage.

The catches are real, though. The reload is glacial — getting caught mid-belt-swap is a death sentence. ADS speed is slow, so it's a poor choice for reactive close-quarters scrambles. And being 5.56, each round hits softer than the 7.62 of the other two LMGs; the M249 wins on volume, not per-shot punch. None of that dethrones it, because the 100-round belt is a capability nothing else in the class has. If a crate lands near you, the M249 is almost always worth grabbing.

MG3: the suppression machine

The MG3 is the wild one. It's a 7.62mm crate-only LMG, and its signature trick is a selectable rate of fire — you can toggle between a lower, more controllable cyclic rate and a genuinely absurd high rate of fire. Flip it to high and it dumps lead faster than basically anything else in the game; flip it down and it becomes a touch more manageable for actually keeping shots on a target.

That high-rate mode is the whole personality. As pure suppression — "nobody is peeking this angle for the next five seconds" — the MG3 is terrifying. The 7.62 caliber means each of those rounds also hits harder than the M249's 5.56, so it's not just noise, it's damage. Paired with its large belt feed, it can lock down a position the way few guns can.

The downsides scale with the upside. At high rate of fire, recoil and ammo consumption are both savage — you'll burn through that belt and your control fast, so the high setting is best used in short, deliberate bursts of suppression rather than held endlessly. Like the M249, it's crate-only and slow to bring up. It ranks just under the M249 here mostly because the M249's bigger practical sustained-fire window and slightly easier control make it the more dependable suppression tool for most players, while the MG3 is the higher-ceiling, higher-variance option.

DP-28: the world-spawn workhorse

Here's the one nobody respects and probably should. The DP-28 is the only LMG in PUBG you find as world loot — it spawns on the ground, on the regular maps, no crate required. It's 7.62mm, fed from a distinctive 47-round top-mounted pan (drum) magazine, and it's the gun this entire category is actually accessible through.

The DP-28's real strength is that mix of a fat mag and a hard-hitting 7.62 round on a gun you can plan to have. Forty-seven rounds is well above an AR's, so you get genuine sustained-fire and suppression capability without needing a care package to fall on your head. Its rate of fire is on the slower side, which — counterintuitively — makes it more controllable than its size suggests: the slower cadence keeps the climb manageable, and braced or prone it's a steady mid-range gun.

Its quirks are the drum and the handling. The pan magazine and overall weight mean slow ADS and a slow reload, so the DP-28 punishes you for reactive close-range fights the same way the others do — it wants you set up, holding an angle or a building, not sprinting around corners. Treat it like what it is: a defensive, hold-this-position gun you can actually find, and it's a legitimately strong pickup, especially in squads where one player anchoring a position with sustained 7.62 is worth a lot. It's third on raw power only because the two crate guns out-suppress it; on availability it's first by a mile.

When an LMG beats an AR

This is the question that actually matters, because most of the time you'll have an AR in your hands and the LMG is the should I swap decision. An LMG beats an AR when:

• You're holding a position, not pushing one. Defending a compound, anchoring a building in the final circles, or covering an angle your squad has to cross — the LMG's job is to make that space unlivable, and the big mag does it.
• You're suppressing for a teammate. The whole point of suppression is that the enemy can't peek while your squadmate flanks or revives. An AR runs dry mid-suppression; the M249's belt doesn't.
• You're shooting vehicles or grouped enemies. Sustained fire into a moving car or a clustered squad racks up damage an AR has to keep reloading out of.
• You're prone/braced at mid-range and the fight is static. Set up behind cover, an LMG's downsides (ADS speed, mobility) don't apply, and its uptime advantage does.

An LMG loses to an AR when the fight is mobile: hot drops, building clears, anything where you're moving and reacting and need a fast ADS. There, the slow handling gets you killed and you want a kitted M416 or AUG every time. The smart play is rarely "LMG instead of AR" — it's "AR as your primary, LMG as a situational second gun for the hold-this-position fights," which is exactly the kind of two-gun thinking we lay out in the loadouts guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• If a crate drops near you, grab the M249 — the 100-round belt is suppression nothing else matches
• Treat the MG3 as a high-ceiling crate alternative; use its high rate of fire in short bursts, not endless holds
• Pick up the DP-28 as a real loadout choice — it's the only world-spawn LMG and a strong defensive anchor
• Run an LMG to hold a position, suppress for teammates, or hit vehicles — not to push or clear buildings
• Keep an AR as your primary and an LMG as a situational second gun, not a replacement
• Get braced or prone before judging an LMG — handling and recoil are far better set up than on the move
• Never get caught mid-reload — LMG reloads are long enough to lose the fight you were winning
• Treat any exact damage figure as approximate; PUBG never published official values