How to Choose the Right Dart Weight: A Complete Guide

Last updated 16 September 2026.

Start between 22g and 24g. Give that weight a fortnight of regular practice before you judge it, then move in single-gram steps if it still feels wrong. That band is where the professional game sits, where the manufacturers concentrate their ranges, and where you will find by far the widest choice of barrels. The rest of this guide is how to work out whether you belong above it, below it, or exactly where you started.

Why Dart Weight Matters

Weight decides how much force you have to put into a dart to get it to the board, and how much a slightly imperfect release costs you. Too heavy for your action and you fatigue quickly and start dropping into the 19s and 3s below your target. Too light and you overcompensate with force, lose the back end of the flight, and find darts skidding off the wire.

Finding your weight is about matching the dart to your throwing mechanics: your arm speed, your release point and your natural arc. Nobody can tell you the number from the other side of a counter. What they can do is narrow the range you experiment in, which is what everything below is for.

What the Dart Makers Themselves Recommend

Here is something most weight guides skip. The manufacturers do not agree with each other, and the gap between them is wide enough to change what you buy.

Harrows tops out two grams below where Red Dragon starts, and the midpoints of the two recommendations are five grams apart. Both cases are reasonable. Harrows is optimising for endurance and control. Red Dragon is optimising for day-one consistency, on the view that a heavier barrel punishes a sloppy release less. Neither is wrong so much as answering a slightly different question.

Worth saying plainly: this is a genuine split in the trade, not a settled fact. If you have read two guides that contradicted each other on beginner weight, that is why.

What Weights Can You Actually Buy?

The argument above is easier to settle with numbers, so we counted our own shelves. Across the 695 dart sets listed on ArrowHeadz at the time of writing, there are 1,770 individual weight options available to order. Here is how they fall.

Whole-gram weights from 20g to 28g, covering 1,717 of the 1,770 options. The remainder are half-gram weights and a thin tail below 20g and above 28g. A set sold in four weights is counted four times, because the question being asked is how much choice exists at each weight.

Three things fall out of that count.

• 62% of every weight option we stock sits between 22g and 24g. Stretch it to 21g to 24g and it is 70.5%. The trade has voted with its tooling.
• Only 2% of options are 20g or lighter. If you are set on a genuinely light steel tip dart, expect your choice of barrel shape and grip to narrow sharply.
• 13.2% are 26g or heavier. Enough to shop from, but the Red Dragon recommendation of 26g to 30g puts a beginner into the thinner end of the catalogue at the exact moment they most benefit from trying several barrels.

That last point is the practical reason we point most first-time buyers at 22g to 24g. Not because heavier is wrong, but because the mid range is where you can change barrel shape, grip and length without also having to change weight, which is what makes a sensible experiment possible.

Dart Weight Ranges Explained

Light Darts: 18g to 21g

Light darts suit a fast, snappy throwing action. If you release quickly with minimal follow-through, a lighter dart responds to that. They ask less of your arm across a long session. The trade-off is that a light dart is less tolerant of an inconsistent release and, as the table above shows, the choice is limited.

Suits: fast throwers, players with a short draw.

Medium Darts: 22g to 24g

The default, and the widest range on the market. Enough mass to carry a slightly imperfect release, light enough not to tire you out across a long match. If you are unsure, this is where to start.

Suits: most players. See our beginner's guide for choosing a first set.

Heavy Darts: 25g and above

Heavy darts suit a slower, more deliberate action with a strong follow-through. The extra mass means the dart is less disturbed by small errors at the point of release. They also demand more of your arm, which matters more the longer you play.

Suits: deliberate throwers, players who prefer a pronounced arc.

What Weight Do the Professionals Use?

Short version: most of the current tour throws somewhere in the 22g to 24g band, and published playing weights vary far more by player than the usual "the pros all throw 23g" line suggests.

We keep the detailed breakdown on one page rather than repeating it here, because the figures need checking against what the manufacturers and the darts press actually publish rather than what gets copied around. If that is what brought you here, the sourced player-by-player table is in our best dart weight to throw guide.

One thing worth carrying away: matching a professional's weight will not give you their throw. Weight is downstream of mechanics, not upstream of them.

How Weight Relates to Tungsten Percentage

A 23g dart made from 90% tungsten is noticeably slimmer than a 23g brass dart. Tungsten is far denser than brass, so you get the same mass in less volume. Push the tungsten content up to 95% and the barrel gets slimmer again at the same weight, which is what allows tighter grouping in the treble bed.

The practical consequence: if you want more weight without a fatter barrel, a higher tungsten percentage is how you get it. If you want a slimmer barrel at the weight you already throw, same answer. Our guide to barrel shapes covers how profile interacts with all of this, and the steel tip versus soft tip comparison covers the material differences.

How to Find Your Ideal Weight

Step 1: Start in the Middle

Unless you have a specific reason not to, begin at 23g or 24g. It is the most neutral starting point and, on the numbers above, the point in the catalogue where you have the most barrels to choose between.

Step 2: Watch Where the Darts Land

After a few sessions, pay attention to the pattern rather than the individual darts:

• Consistently dropping low? The dart may be heavier than your action wants. Try 21g to 22g.
• Consistently landing high? You may be putting more force in than the weight needs. Try 24g to 25g.
• Darts landing flat or tail-up? Weight is probably fine. Look at your release technique instead.
• Fading after half an hour? Drop a gram or two. Endurance decides more legs than most players admit.

Step 3: Adjust by 1g at a Time

Do not jump from 22g to 26g. Move a gram at a time and give each weight at least a fortnight of regular practice before judging it. Muscle memory needs longer to adapt than most people give it, and changing two variables at once tells you nothing.

Step 4: Look at the Whole Setup

Weight does not act alone. Longer shafts and larger flights add drag at the back of the dart, which changes the flight in a way that feels similar to adding weight. The same barrel with short shafts and slim flights behaves like a different dart. Change one thing at a time here too.

Weight, Steel Tip and Soft Tip

Steel tip darts thrown at a bristle board have no practical weight problem: a quality sisal board takes any weight you can legally throw. Competition rules set the ceiling rather than the board. For tournaments run under the Darts Regulation Authority, which covers PDC events, the limit is 40 grams and 200mm in length. The World Darts Federation sets its own limit at 50 grams and 30.5cm.

Soft tip is the different case. Soft tip darts are built and sold in a much narrower, lighter band than steel tip, because the plastic point and the segment holes in an electronic board are what carry the load rather than sisal fibres. Limits vary between board manufacturers and between soft tip leagues, so check the figure in your own board's manual rather than assuming a number you read somewhere. If you are moving between the two formats, expect to change weight as well as tips.

The Bottom Line

Start at 22g to 24g unless your throwing action strongly suggests otherwise. Give each weight a fortnight, move a gram at a time, and remember that barrel profile, grip and the back end of the dart all matter as much as the raw gram figure. The makers themselves disagree about where a beginner should start, so treat any single confident number, including ours, as a starting point rather than an answer.

Browse darts by tungsten percentage →

Frequently Asked Questions

What weight darts should a beginner use?

Start between 22g and 24g. Harrows recommends exactly that range for a first set, and 62% of the weight options we stock fall inside it, so it is also where you have the most barrels to choose between. Red Dragon takes the opposite view and recommends 26g to 30g for beginners, on the basis that a heavier dart carries an unpolished release. Both are defensible, but the mid range lets you experiment with barrel shape and grip without changing weight at the same time.

Is 22g or 24g better for beginners?

Neither is better in the abstract. 24g asks slightly less force from you and is marginally more forgiving of a loose release; 22g suits a quicker, snappier action and tires you less over a long session. Pick one, throw it for a fortnight, and let the pattern of where your darts land decide. Consistently low points you lighter, consistently high points you heavier.

Are 26g darts too heavy?

No. 26g is a perfectly normal competition weight, comfortably inside both the Darts Regulation Authority limit of 40 grams and the World Darts Federation limit of 50 grams, and Red Dragon actively recommends 26g and above for beginners. The honest caution is choice rather than legality: only about 13% of the weight options we list are 26g or heavier, so you will be shopping from a smaller pool of barrel shapes.

Are 20g darts too light?

Not if your throw suits them. A fast, snappy release with a short draw works well with a lighter dart. The practical problem is availability: barely 2% of the weight options we stock are 20g or under, so you will have far less choice of barrel profile and grip than someone shopping at 23g.

Do heavier darts go straighter?

They travel on a flatter path for a given amount of effort, and carry more momentum, so a small imperfection at the release disturbs them less. That is not the same as going straighter. A heavier dart will repeat your throw more faithfully, including the parts of it you would rather it did not. It cannot correct your aim, and past a certain point the extra effort costs you more in fatigue than the stability gains you back.

Do any professionals use 24g darts?

Yes. 24g sits inside the band most of the current tour occupies and is among the most widely produced signature weights. The player-by-player detail, with sources, is in our best dart weight to throw guide.

Is there a maximum dart weight?

For steel tip play, yes, and it depends on the governing body. The Darts Regulation Authority, which regulates PDC tournaments, sets a maximum of 40 grams and a maximum length of 200mm. The World Darts Federation sets 50 grams and 30.5cm in its playing rules. Both are far above anything sold as a standard set, so recreational players will never run into them. Soft tip is governed by your board manufacturer and your league rather than by these rules.

Sources: Harrows Darts, Darts Buying Guide for Beginners. Red Dragon Darts, Darts: All You Need to Know. Darts Regulation Authority Rules 2026, rule 6.1.1. World Darts Federation Playing and Tournament Rules, rule 1.01. Catalogue figures counted from the ArrowHeadz product listing on 16 September 2026.