Which Gundam Grade Should You Start With? HG vs RG vs MG vs PG vs Entry Grade
So you want to build a Gundam kit. You pull up a shop page and immediately hit a wall of letters — HG, RG, MG, PG, EG — and none of them tell you anything useful.
Here's the thing nobody says up front: grades aren't difficulty levels, and they aren't quality levels either. A grade tells you the scale, how the kit is engineered, and roughly how long you'll be sat at the table. That's it. A $25 High Grade isn't a worse product than a $120 Master Grade. It's just less model.
Quick version first, then I'll go through each one.
The quick answer
| Grade | Scale | Typical price | Build time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Grade (EG) | 1/144 | $12–20 | 1–2 hours | Your first kit, no tools |
| High Grade (HG) | 1/144 | $20–35 | 2–4 hours | Most kits, most suits |
| Real Grade (RG) | 1/144 | $30–55 | 4–8 hours | A detailed second build |
| Master Grade (MG) | 1/100 | $45–145 | 8–15 hours | A proper weekend project |
| Perfect Grade (PG) | 1/60 | $250+ | 30+ hours | A display piece |
Entry Grade — start here if you've never built one
Entry Grade exists because Bandai figured out that what stops people isn't skill, it's not owning any tools. EG runners are designed so you can twist parts off with your fingers without leaving a mark, and the colours are moulded in, so you don't need stickers to make it look right.
Don't mistake "beginner" for "cheap knockoff" though. The Entry Grade RX-78-2 gets recommended over kits three times the price all the time, and it deserves it — the engineering is recent and the proportions are spot on.
What you give up is articulation and part count. An EG won't hit every pose you've seen on Instagram. But it'll be done and standing on your shelf the same night you opened the box, and that matters more than you'd think for a first build.
High Grade — the one people buy most
HG is the backbone of the whole hobby. 1/144 scale, so about 13cm finished, $20–35, and you'll knock one out over an evening or two.
The real reason HG matters is range. There are well over a thousand of them. Whatever suit you're after from whatever series, chances are it exists as an HG and doesn't exist anywhere else. All the weird Zeon stuff, the grunt units that got one episode, the Gundam from the show nobody watched — that's all HG territory.
One warning: the line's been running forty years, so quality is all over the place. A 2023 HG and a 1999 HG are barely the same hobby. Stick to recent releases or anything labelled "Revive" and you'll be fine.
Real Grade — MG detail, HG size
RG is the clever one. Same 1/144 scale as a High Grade, but Bandai crammed in an internal frame, multi-coloured runners and panel-line detail you'd normally only get on a kit twice the size.
That comes at a price, and the price is tiny parts. Some of them are really tiny. This is the grade where people find out the hard way that decent nippers aren't optional, usually about the time a piece snaps or comes off the runner with a white stress mark across it.
So: bad first kit, great second or third. If you've finished an HG and found yourself enjoying the fiddly bits rather than swearing at them, RG is your next stop.
Master Grade — where it stops being a quick build
MG jumps to 1/100, so you're looking at around 18cm finished. But the size isn't really the point. MG kits have full internal frames, hatches that open, hydraulics that move, and part counts north of 500.
This is a project. Budget eight to fifteen hours across a few sittings, and expect to want proper tools by the end of it.
MG has the biggest quality spread of any grade because the line started back in 1995. If you see Ver.Ka on the box, that's a Hajime Katoki redesign and they're generally superb. Anything from the last decade is a safe bet. A mid-2000s MG is a very different afternoon. When you're spending MG money, check the release year before you check the character.
Perfect Grade — the one that owns a shelf
1/60 scale, around 30cm finished, 700+ parts, thirty hours minimum. PG kits come with LED options, fingers that articulate individually, and internal frames engineered like actual machinery.
There are only a handful of them and they're expensive. Worth saying though: they're not harder than an MG, they're just longer. The instructions aren't more complicated. There's simply a lot more of everything.
Buy a PG because you want the finished thing on your shelf, not because you're after a challenge.
The ones nobody bothers to explain
A few more you'll bump into:
- MGEX — Master Grade Extreme. MG scale with serious LED and translucent-layer gimmicks. There are fewer than ten. See MGEX →
- RE/100 — 1/100 with simpler internals than a full MG. It exists so obscure suits can get the bigger treatment without MG tooling costs, and it's usually good value. See RE/100 →
- SD / SDCS — Super Deformed. Chibi proportions, cheap, fast, genuinely fun. Not a lesser grade, just a different look.
- MGSD — Master Grade Super Deformed, and don't let the chibi proportions fool you. These have a full inner frame, proper colour separation and MG-level engineering packed into a tiny footprint. Genuinely some of the best-engineered kits Bandai makes right now. See the MGSD Destiny Gundam →
- Full Mechanics — 1/100, no inner frame, strong outer detail. Sits between RE/100 and MG.
What you actually need to build one
For an Entry Grade kit? Nothing. That's the whole idea.
For everything else, three things separate a clean build from an annoying one:
- Single-blade nippers. Biggest upgrade you can make, and it isn't close. Twisting parts off or using scissors leaves white stress marks, and once they're there you can't undo them. A cheap pair beats no pair; a good pair is a joy.
- A hobby knife or sanding sponge for the little nub left behind after you cut. Takes seconds per part, makes a visible difference.
- A panel-line marker. Totally optional, and the cheapest way to make a kit look twice its price.
You don't need paint. Modern kits are moulded in colour and look good straight out of the box — anyone telling you otherwise is describing a different hobby.
So what should you actually start with?
Never built a model? Entry Grade. Finish something on night one and find out if you even like it before you spend real money.
Built models before, or pretty sure you'll enjoy it? High Grade, and pick a suit you actually care about. Liking the subject gets you through the fiddly bits.
Got a couple under your belt? RG if you want more detail at the same size, MG if you want something bigger to sink a weekend into.
After the shelf piece? PG. Clear the space first, seriously.
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