A burglary rating tells you who tried to break in, with what, and for how long. The trouble is that most safes sold online carry no such rating at all, and the ones that do use labels that sound alike but mean very different things. This page explains each, in order of how much it proves, and gives the steel gauge table every spec table on this site refers to.
The ladder, from most proof to least
- UL TL-30 and TL-15. A lab attack test on the door with hand tools, picking tools and portable power tools, for 30 or 15 minutes of working time.
- UL RSC Level III, II and I. A lab attack test with lighter tools and shorter times. Level I is the rating most gun safes that have any rating carry.
- California's gun safe standard. A construction specification in law: steel thickness, bolts, lock and hinge protection. It is not a test.
- B-rate and C-rate. Construction descriptions used by dealers and insurers. No test, no lab.
- "Meets UL standards", "UL style", "heavy duty". Marketing phrases with no certification behind them.
A real UL rating comes with a UL label on the safe and a listing in UL's directory. Our spec tables show a rating as Certified only when we have found that directory entry and dated the check. Everything else is shown as the listing's or maker's claim. UL's directory has refused our requests so far, which is why every UL rating on this site is still a claim. Our method page explains the labels.
UL RSC: three attack levels
Residential Security Container ratings sit in UL 1037, Antitheft Alarms and Devices. Until UL revised it, there was one RSC level. Now there are three:
| Level | Crew | Net working time | Tools | Fails if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | 1 technician | 5 minutes | Common hand tools such as drills, screwdrivers and hammers | The door is opened |
| II | 2 technicians | 10 minutes | More aggressive tools, such as picks, high-speed carbide drills and pressure-applying devices | They make a 6 sq in opening in the door or front face |
| III | 2 technicians | 10 minutes | Even more aggressive tools | They make a 2 sq in opening |
Source: UL's announcement of the revised standard. Two details matter more than the headline numbers.
Net working time is not clock time. Liberty Safe describes the Level I tools as pry bars, screwdrivers, adjustable wrenches and hammers not exceeding 3 lb, and notes the clock stops whenever the tools are not touching the safe. A dealer guide adds an 18-inch limit on tool length. So five minutes of working time can be much longer in real life, and it never includes a grinder, a saw or a torch.
Light safes are dropped, unless they can be bolted down. UL says products of 750 lb or less also face a drop test, which simulates knocking the safe over to spring the door. A product that can be reliably mounted, with the maker's hardware and instructions, skips it. Anchoring is part of how UL expects a light safe to resist removal, which is one more reason to bolt yours down.
RSC says nothing about fire. A safe can carry an RSC rating and no fire claim, or the reverse. For fire claims, read how fire ratings on safes work.
On Amazon, a stated UL RSC rating is rare. In our product library only Stealth listings state one, all on large long gun safes; AMSEC's dealer lists one for a long gun safe whose Amazon listing does not mention it. No gun cabinet or home security safe in our pool states one.
TL-15 and TL-30: commercial burglary ratings
TL ratings come from UL 687, UL's standard for burglary-resistant safes. Liberty Safe defines TL-15 as resisting entry "for a net working time of 15 minutes when attacked on the door with common hand tools, picking tools, and portable electric tools", and TL-30 as the same attack for 30 minutes.
The insurer Jewelers Mutual decodes the letters: TL is tool resistant, TR is torch resistant and X6 means all six sides. "A TL-30 safe is tool resistant for 30 minutes, on the door only." A TRTL-30x6 resists torch and tools for 30 minutes on all six sides.
Dealers commonly state that a TL-15 safe has solid steel walls about an inch thick, a minimum weight of 750 lb or anchoring instructions, and a UL Group 2 combination lock. We could not confirm those construction figures from UL's own text, which is sold rather than published. What is clear is the gap: a TL-rated safe is a different class of object from an RSC gun safe, and it is priced and weighted accordingly. Jewelers Mutual, which insures jewellers, uses these ratings when it advises on which safe suits how much stock.
B-rate and C-rate are descriptions, not tests
Neither is a UL test, and no insurer document we could find defines them. Dealers use them for construction:
- B-rate: about a quarter-inch steel body and a half-inch door. One dealer calls it "essentially any box with a lock on it".
- C-rate: about a half-inch steel body and a one-inch door.
- B/C: a B-rate shell with extra steel layers and fire material.
These numbers are useful, because steel thickness is real, but no one has attacked the safe to prove them. A safe sold as B-rate still shows as the maker's claim in our tables. The Hollon B2015C on the best home safes page is an example: Hollon publishes the construction, and we report it as Hollon's description.
Steel gauge: a higher number is thinner steel
Gauge is a size code for sheet steel. The scale runs backwards: the bigger the number, the thinner the steel. These are the Manufacturers' Standard Gauge thicknesses for sheet steel:
| Gauge | Inches | Millimetres | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 0.1793 | 4.55 | California's minimum single-layer door plate |
| 8 | 0.1644 | 4.18 | Doors on some budget safes |
| 10 | 0.1345 | 3.42 | Bodies on better gun safes |
| 11 | 0.1196 | 3.04 | Bodies on better gun safes and some home safes |
| 12 | 0.1046 | 2.66 | California's minimum single-wall body |
| 14 | 0.0747 | 1.90 | Cabinets and small electronic safes |
| 16 | 0.0598 | 1.52 | Lockers and budget cabinets |
For scale, a quarter-inch B-rate body is more than twice as thick as 12 gauge, and the inch of steel dealers describe on a TL-15 body is nearly ten times as thick.
Is 12 gauge steel good for a gun safe? It is the floor, not the goal. California sets 12 gauge as the minimum for a single-walled gun safe body, so a safe sold on 12 gauge is meeting a minimum. Ten or 11 gauge is better. Fourteen and 16 gauge are cabinet steel, which is why our gun cabinet roundup says plainly that no pick carries a burglary rating.
Ask for the plate, not the door. An advertised door thickness usually includes the fire board, the inner panel and the space for the bolts. Only the outer steel plate resists tools. When a maker publishes the plate thickness separately, our tables record it. When it only publishes a total door depth, we leave the plate unpublished rather than guess.
Gauge is also missing from most listings. In our 202-product library, only 38 listings state a steel gauge.
California's gun safe standard (11 CCR §4100)
Law as of 2026-10-17. Check the regulation text before relying on it.
California's Department of Justice sets out what counts as a gun safe in title 11 of the California Code of Regulations, section 4100. A safe qualifies in one of two ways.
Option (a): meet every construction requirement.
- It fully contains the firearms and stores them securely.
- A mechanical or electronic combination lock with at least 10,000 possible combinations of at least three numbers, letters or symbols, protected by a case-hardened (Rc 60+) drill-resistant steel plate or equivalent.
- At least three steel locking bolts of at least half-inch thickness, worked by a separate handle and secured by the lock.
- Exterior walls of at least 12-gauge steel for a single wall, or two walls adding up to at least 0.100 inch.
- A door of at least one layer of 7-gauge steel plate, or two layers of at least 12-gauge steel.
- Hinges protected against removal of the door, for example by internal hinges, interlocking doors or dead bars.
Option (b): a UL RSC certification from a nationally recognised testing laboratory. The lab does not have to be UL; any NRTL certifying to UL's RSC standard counts.
The roster is a different list. Many listings say "California DOJ approved". That usually refers to the DOJ's roster of certified firearm safety devices, which covers locks and lock boxes that may accompany a gun sale and are tested by DOJ-certified labs. A roster listing is not the same as meeting the gun safe standard above, and the standard has no list of approved safes: a safe either meets it or it does not. Our product records note when we have checked a model against the roster, with the date.
How to read a safe listing
- Look for a lab and a file number. "UL listed RSC" with a label on the door is a rating. "Meets UL standards" is not.
- Translate the gauge. Use the table above, and remember lower is thicker.
- Count the bolts and their size. California asks for at least three of at least half an inch.
- Check the lock's protection. A hard plate in front of the lock and a relocker make drilling slower.
- Plan to anchor it. UL itself treats bolting down as part of resisting removal.
- Check the recall record. A burglary rating says nothing about whether a fingerprint lock opens for the wrong person. Every pick on this site carries a dated CPSC check.
For picks, see the best long gun safes, which leads with the models that state a UL RSC rating, and the best home safes for cash, jewellery and papers. The gun safe hub links every type.