Rust Raid Calculator: Total Cost in Sulfur, Hits, and Time

Free interactive Rust raid cost calculator above. Pick a target (door, building block, external gate, embrasure) and a tool (C4, rocket, satchel, explosive 5.56) and see the raid cost: how many you need, total sulfur, and placement time. August 2026 vanilla values. Mobile-first. Shareable URL. Embeddable.

How the calculator works

The counts here are published data, not arithmetic. That distinction matters, because this calculator used to derive them: it stored an HP value per target and a damage value per tool, then divided one by the other. That model looks reasonable and cannot be made correct, because Rust’s explosive damage depends on the material tier of what you are hitting, not on whether it is a door or a wall. A single damage figure for “door” had to cover both a wooden door and an armoured one, so the results were wrong wherever those disagreed. It told you a sheet metal door needed 2 C4; it needs 1.

So we replaced the arithmetic with the numbers themselves, taken from the August 2026 community raid chart and cross-checked against a second published chart. Both agree on every value they share, and the sulfur totals reconcile independently: 63 explosive 5.56 on a sheet metal door is 1,575 sulfur at 25 sulfur a round, which is exactly what the charts print.

What it shows you:

• How many you need, as published for that exact target and tool
• Sulfur cost, total raw sulfur to craft them (gunpowder and cloth translated back to sulfur, so tools compare like for like)
• Placement time, cumulative time to place them (rocket reload and satchel light-and-throw included)
• A warning when the count leaves the target standing, which is the detail that gets raids called off. One rocket does not quite finish a sheet metal door; you need something to follow it.

Where no published figure exists for a pairing, the calculator says so instead of showing an estimate. Tool cupboards, foundations and roofs were removed from the target list for that reason: we were holding numbers for them that nothing supported.

How many C4, rockets or satchels for each wall and door

The same published counts the calculator uses, laid out so you can read the answer without picking anything. Hard side, vanilla. An asterisk means that many leaves the target nearly destroyed rather than down, so bring one more or finish it by hand. The last column is the cheapest option in raw sulfur among the ones that actually finish the job, which is not always the fewest items: 63 explosive rounds through a sheet metal door cost less than a single C4, and one rocket is cheaper still but leaves the door in its frame.

The classic raid economics

Vanilla Rust raid math hasn’t changed dramatically in 2026, the meta still revolves around three core decisions:

1. Eco raid vs full raid

An eco raid uses cheap tools (satchels, explosive ammo) at a higher count to keep sulfur cost low. A full raid uses C4 and rockets to break through fast at a higher per-unit cost. Eco wins when you have time and stealth; full wins when speed matters (online raids, defended bases, trio raids on duo bases). The sheet metal door is the clearest example: 1 C4 costs 2,200 sulfur and takes seconds, while 4 satchels cost 1,920 and take most of a minute with a real chance of a dud.

2. Soft side vs hard side

A wall has the same health from both directions, but the soft side (the interior face) takes melee damage that the hard side shrugs off. Players who don’t bury their foundations or honeycomb their walls get raided through soft-sided pickaxe holes for no sulfur at all. The figures above are hard-side raids, which is the case you should plan around.

3. Door choice = primary defense

The single biggest decision raiders make is picking which door to attack, and the answer is usually “not the door”. A sheet metal door goes down to 1 C4, while the stone wall beside it takes 2 and the sheet metal wall takes 4. Garage doors are the outlier worth knowing: 2 C4 or 3 rockets, tougher than a sheet metal door but still softer than the armoured wall around it. Raiders price the whole shell and hit the cheapest square, so a strong door in a weak wall buys you nothing.

Shareable raid math

Every calculation has its own URL via the ?t= and ?w= params. Click “Copy share link” to get a URL that pre-loads your selection, paste into Discord or Reddit and your group sees the same calculation. “Get embed code” gives you an <iframe> snippet for your own wiki/blog.

Run a Rust server with friends

Practice raid setups, test base designs, and run trio wipe servers without dealing with vanilla’s grief economy. Supercraft hosts Rust dedicated servers with admin tools, scheduled wipes, and Discord-webhook event notifications. See plans →

FAQ

Are these vanilla numbers?

Yes, vanilla as of August 2026, from published raid charts rather than from our own arithmetic. Modded servers (Rusty Moose, etc.) may scale damage or explosive costs; check your server’s plugins.

Why does the sulfur cost include gunpowder + cloth?

The number is “raw sulfur equivalent”, if you craft your own gunpowder and cloth from scratch, the bottleneck is sulfur. We translate the full recipe back to sulfur for an apples-to-apples comparison across tools. C4 is 2,200, a rocket 1,400, a satchel 480 and an explosive 5.56 round 25.

What about hard-side vs soft-side raids?

The calculator uses hard-side numbers (the durable side). Soft-side is sometimes pickaxeable for zero sulfur if the base owner didn’t honeycomb their walls. See the Rust server admin wiki for base-defense and wipe strategies.

Why is the tool cupboard not in the list any more?

Because we did not have a sourced figure for it. It was previously shown with a number we could not stand behind, and an authoritative-looking wrong answer is worse than no answer when someone is deciding how much sulfur to farm. The same applies to foundations, roofs and beancan grenades.

Where do explosive ammo numbers come from?

From the published per-target round counts, not from a damage-per-round estimate. A sheet metal door takes 63 rounds, which at 25 sulfur a round is 1,575 sulfur, cheaper than a C4 and the reason explosive ammo stays popular for anyone already carrying a rifle. It assumes your rounds land on the same spot.