PUBG Shotguns Ranked: All 6, S12K to Sawed-Off

A shotgun in PUBG: Battlegrounds is an all-or-nothing weapon class. Land both barrels on a chest at three meters and the fight is over before your opponent's brain registers it. Whiff the first shot at ten meters and you're now manually re-chambering a shell while a guy with an SMG turns you into a respawn screen. There is little middle ground and little forgiveness for a miss.

This is a ranking of PUBG's shotguns specifically, against each other, for the one job they do: deleting somebody inside the length of a hallway. We're not pretending a shotgun competes past 15 meters, because it doesn't. There are six of them on pubg.com's weapons page — the S12K, DBS, S686, S1897, O12, and the Miramar-only Sawed-Off — and the differences between them are mostly about fire rate and how badly a missed shot punishes you. For the bigger picture across every class, see our full PUBG weapons tier list.

One honest caveat up front, same as our AR ranking and SMG ranking: Per-pellet damage figures come from community wiki pages and can shift with a balance patch. So we rank on the things you can feel and verify — fire mode, mag/shell count, reload method, ammo, and rarity — not a fake-precise damage spreadsheet. This is the PC and console game, which balances separately from PUBG Mobile.

Verified 2026-11-01: pubg.com's weapons page lists exactly six shotguns, and the latest live patch is Update 43.2 (13 October 2026). We could not open the full 43.2 notes, and the wiki's newest shotgun balance entry is Update 15.1 (more hit probability at short range, listed on the S12K, DBS, S686, S1897 and Sawed-Off pages), so treat the numbers below as the wiki's, not a fresh in-game test.

What a shotgun is actually for

A shotgun is a hot-drop and breach weapon, full stop. It exists for the opening scramble when few players have armor or attachments, and for the rest of the match it lives or dies on whether you ever get a fight inside its window. That window is brutally short: every shotgun in PUBG fires a spread of pellets that drops off hard past roughly 10-15 meters, so a target that's even a little far away takes a few stray pellets instead of a lethal cluster.

What makes a shotgun terrifying when it works is the one-button kill. A clean point-blank hit on an unarmored or lightly armored target ends the fight instantly — no time-to-kill, no spray to control, no second chance for them to react. The trade is that a miss is catastrophic, because most shotguns chamber slowly and you're defenseless during the reload. The whole class is a high-variance bet: huge upside, huge downside. The best shotguns are the ones that shrink the downside — by firing again faster, or by holding more shells before you have to reload.

How we rank shotguns in PUBG

Four questions decide where a shotgun lands, in roughly this order:

1. Fire rate and follow-up. The single most important trait. A shotgun that can put a second shot on target immediately (semi-auto, or a double-barrel's instant second hammer) is worth far more than one that makes you rack a pump between shots, because real fights rarely end on shot one.
2. Shell count before reload. How many shots you get before you're forced into the dangerous part. A 5-round tube or a 14-shell magazine lets you take a second target; a 2-shell break-action does not.
3. Reload speed and method. One-by-one shell reloads (the pump and the DBS's monster magazine) are agonizingly slow and cancelable; a magazine or break-action swap is faster. The reload is when you die.
4. Ammo and availability. Most shotguns feed common 12 gauge, so supply isn't the problem — availability is. A world-spawn shotgun beats a map-locked or rarer one you'll seldom hold.

The shotgun ranking is really a fire-rate ranking. At three meters, the gun that can fire its second shell fastest wins, because the first shot almost never finishes the job against an armored target. That's why the semi-auto sits on top and the slow pump sits lower.

S-tier: the ones worth a slot

These are the shotguns you'll actually choose to keep into the mid-game, not just clutch in the opening scramble. (The DBS only drops from Care Packages now, so in practice you'll rarely hold one.)

The S12K (the in-game Saiga-12) is the shotgun you keep, because it doesn't punish you for missing the first shot. It's semi-automatic — pull the trigger as fast as you can click and it keeps firing, no pump animation locking you out between shells. That alone makes it the most forgiving close-range gun in PUBG, and it has a 5-round magazine you can extend, plus support for AR-style attachments (it takes scopes, a choke, and a magazine). The catch is that semi-auto fire spreads its pellets a touch wider per shot than a tightly-choked pump, so you trade a little per-shot lethality for the ability to just keep shooting.

The DBS is the close-range nuke. It's a double-barrel bullpup that holds 14 shells and racks its pump after every two shots, chambering the next pair — which makes it the burst-damage shotgun when both shots connect at point-blank. The PUBG wiki describes it as having by far the largest damage potential of any shotgun. The catch is the reload: stuffing 14 shells back into it one at a time takes an eternity, so the DBS rewards you for peeking in and out of cover between double-shots and absolutely punishes you for emptying it in the open. Treat it as a burst weapon — fire your pairs, then break contact — and it's the scariest thing in a building. Since Update 32.1 (October 2024) it no longer world-spawns and comes from Care Packages, which is the only reason it's not the default.

A-tier: the classic pump and the double

Strong close-range guns that fall just short because they make you pay for a missed shot.

The S1897 (the Winchester pump) is the classic PUBG shotgun and still a perfectly good one. It holds 5 shells in the tube, hits hard, and accepts a choke to tighten its spread for a touch more reach. The problem is the pump: you have to rack it between every single shot, and during that animation you can't fire. Against an armored target who survives shot one, that pump is exactly enough time for them to laser you back. It's a great gun in the hands of someone who lands the first shot and a death sentence for someone who doesn't — which is why it sits below the self-loading S12K.

The S686 (the Beretta 686 over-under) is the duelist's shotgun: a break-action double-barrel that fires two shells about as fast as you can pull the trigger, with no pump in between. Those two shots come out faster than the S1897 can rack, so in a pure one-on-one breach the S686 often wins the exchange — if both shots land, your target is gone. But you only get two, and reloading the break-action, while quicker than the pump's shell-by-shell tube, still leaves you helpless against a second attacker. It's an excellent opener and a liability in a squad fight where someone else is already pushing you.

B-tier and the niche picks

• O12 (12 gauge slug, Rare). The Origin 12 is the oddball: a shotgun with a 30-round magazine and full-auto fire, firing 12 gauge slugs rather than a normal pellet spread. On paper it's a buzzsaw — sustained automatic shotgun fire is unique in PUBG. In practice it is listed as Rare and fires slug ammo that no other shotgun can load, so you can't build a habit around it, and its slug-style behavior makes it play more like a hard-hitting close-range automatic than a traditional scattergun. When you find one, it's a monster for as long as you're in a building. We rank it B as a practical pick precisely because you so rarely hold it.
• Sawed-Off (12 gauge, Miramar-only). Here's the real curiosity. The Sawed-Off is a 2-shell shotgun that occupies your handgun/sidearm slot, not a primary weapon slot, and it only spawns on Miramar. That makes it a free panic button — a point-blank double-tap you can carry in addition to two full rifles. It's weak, short-ranged, and only holds two shells, but as a no-cost third option for the one moment someone rushes your corner, it has a real niche on the desert map. Don't expect it to carry you; expect it to save you once.

That's the honest bottom of the class: there's no truly bad shotgun in PUBG, just the slow pumps that punish a miss, the oddities (the rare slug-fed O12 and the Miramar-only Sawed-Off), and the variance baked into every scattergun.

Choke vs duckbill: the attachment question

Two muzzle attachments are shotgun-specific, and picking the right one changes how your shots land:

• Choke. Tightens the pellet spread into a narrower cone, which effectively extends your reliable range and concentrates damage on one target. This is the default — it makes a hit at 8-10 meters land far more of its pellets where you want them. Run a choke on the S1897, S686, and S12K whenever you can.
• Duckbill (S12K and S1897). Does the opposite horizontally: it widens the spread side-to-side and tightens it vertically, turning your shot into a flat horizontal fan. It's a niche pick for spraying multiple close targets or compensating for poor horizontal aim, but for single-target lethality the choke is almost always better.

The rule of thumb: choke for killing one person reliably, duckbill only if you specifically want a wider horizontal sweep. Most of the time, choke. Build the close-range fundamentals that make either one matter in our movement and positioning guide.

Which shotgun should you actually run

A shotgun is the close half of a loadout, paired with a rifle for everything past 15 meters, exactly like the SMG pairing in our loadouts guide. An SMG is the alternative for that close slot, because an SMG forgives a miss and a shotgun doesn't — but in tight, room-heavy fights a shotgun's one-button kill is the draw.

The short version:

• Safe default: S12K. Semi-auto means no punishing pump, the extended mag gives you follow-up shots, and the wiki lists it as a Common-rarity gun.
• For maximum close-range damage: DBS, played as a peek-and-burst weapon. Nothing hits harder when both shots land.
• For a fast one-on-one breach: S686 — two shots quicker than a pump can rack.
• The classic pump: S1897 — fine if you land the first shot, deadly to you if you don't.
• If you find one: O12, for full-auto shotgun fire as long as you're indoors.
• On Miramar only: Sawed-Off in your sidearm slot, as a free panic button on top of two rifles.

Quick Action Checklist

• Default to the S12K — it's semi-auto, so a missed shot doesn't lock you into a pump animation
• Feed the S12K an extended mag and a choke as soon as you find them
• Treat the DBS as peek-and-burst — fire your double-shots, then break cover before the brutal reload
• Use the S686 for one-on-one breaches — two fast shots beat a pump, but you only get two
• Land the S1897's first shot or don't take the fight — the pump punishes a miss hard
• Grab the O12 if you find one (it needs slug ammo), but only count on it indoors
• On Miramar, keep a Sawed-Off in your handgun slot as a free panic button
• Pair any shotgun with a rifle for range
• Treat any specific damage number as approximate — community wiki figures shift with balance patches