The Best Flip Up Sights for Your AR-15

A good pair of flip up sights is hard to beat. They’re there when you need them and when you need them, you really need them!

In this post, we go over our top picks for the best flip up sights for AR-15. There are a lot of choices out there, but we settled on just a handful as the best. Let’s get started below.

Trinity Force Tactical Flip Up Iron Sight

This is a great sight, but it’s hard to go wrong with iron flip up sights. For less than twenty bucks, you can get flip up irons for your AR-15 that include large and small peep sight, and a rounded horseshoe-shaped guard front post. The combination allows the fastest time on target, as you can put the circle arc around your target at close quarters, and use the post for normal engagements.

I love a good set of irons, and the ability to stow them when they aren’t wanted is always a plus. Horseshoe designs like this are known to be more accurate in the dark, as you can center the horseshoe as well as the post to ensure that your eyes are centered. Some marring of the metal will occur overtime with adjustment. But it’s a solid sight, and very affordable.

Flip Up Backup Battle Sights by Ozark Armament

If you are looking for a no-nonsense flip up sight, this might be right up your alley. It doesn’t include the option for a larger “night” ring to look through, and the post is shielded by M1-style wings that are easy to keep clean, but a little trickier to use. The peep is small enough that it shouldn’t matter though. Just put the point on whatever you want to destroy.

The sights are milled aluminum, so they will never rust, but they will be more brittle than using iron. The material choice also keeps the weight down. Adjustments lock in place, and there should be no issue holding zero once installed. Just make sure to secure your rail mounts with blue loctite to keep the screws from backing out without over-tightening them.

Ozark also makes one hell of a great laser sight for AR-15, which we wrote about a while ago. This is a good company and a great value on a set of flip up sights.

Ade Advanced Optics Pro Series Mil Spec Flip Up Iron Rear/Front Sight Mount

Another low-cost option here. The Ade Advanced aluminum sight combo features a reliable horseshoe front sight, and both a large and small peep at the back. The unit seems well made, at least as well as other aluminum options, even if it looks a little skimpy.

For the features you get, it’s a good combo for the price, and if you are a fan of Ade Optics, then you can trust this sight to serve you as well as their other products.

Diamondhead USA Polymer Front and Rear Flip Up Sights

A diamond-shaped sight picture is among the latest in a long line of iron sights. The sharp corners make it easy to visually center everything in your sight picture for fast target acquisition, and comes with a bonus.

Since it’s so easy to center the whole of the front sight, you can figure the range at which the iron wall on the front post is zeroed, and set the post at a 6 o’clock sighting that covers a target at a different range. A nice feature indeed.

The front post is much easier to adjust than other irons, as it doesn’t require any kind of crazy indent tool. The post is squared off, and I think it would have served them well to make it pointed, but as the whole setup is made of hard polymer, a little work with a file will fix that right up.

On the material, I like iron the best on iron sights, but these hard polymers are becoming better and more popular all the time. This sight will look good on your AR-15.

Mako Group Front and Rear Flip-Up Sight Set

These looked really cool at first, and will make your AR-15 stand out at range trips. The hard polymer is robust and well engineered, but not perfectly finished. While there isn’t any annoying flashing, they do have that sharp line that accompanies many plastic parts from the molding. Not an issue for most, but not my thing. The sight picture is, well, a little different.

The wings are semi-horseshoe shaped, and they’re thick. Real thick. Which means less of your sight picture will be target and background, and more will be the front sight. Not a deal-breaker, but slightly annoying.

The biggest win, which gets these irons the nod, is the structure. The thick, hard, plastic and the overall functioning of the sights is designed to be incredibly rugged. You shouldn’t ever have to worry about these sights breaking or bending on you, unless you attack them with a cigarette lighter or toss your AR-15 in the oven. Check the latest price on these on Amazon (best price).