Bullet wt 55g in ar15 and Rugar Amarican bolt action. Mostly plinking. Self defense if needed.
Check out the thread I created on reloading for a Mini-14. It's all about 55 grain bullets and I worked with four powders: H-335, Benchmark, X-Terminator, and StaBALL Match. The thread has more details, but I'll repeat some of the salient ones.
The Hodgdon website has a burn-rate comparison chart. It includes a lot of non-Hodgdon powders:
https://hodgdonpowderco.com/wp-cont...mokeless-Relative-Burn-Rate-Chart-WEBSITE.pdf
Note that 223 burn-rate range goes from about Reloder 7 up to about CFE223. That chart has about 40 powders in that range.
Generally speaking, faster burning powders are going to reach peak pressure sooner and lose pressure behind the bullet faster. They can be effective for keeping pressure up behind quickly accelerating lightweight bullets that have less inertia. On the other hand, they will have reach max pressure and taper off their conversion to gas sooner, providing less acceleration to heavy bullets.
Generally speaking, slower burning powders may not ignite or burn consistently at the lower pressures that exist behind a light bullet. The bullet gets out of the way before enough pressure can build up. On the other hand, these slower burning powders, especially those with a more progressive burn rate, are just the ticket to keep pressure up behind heavier bullets all the way down the bore, maximizing velocity.
Powders have other features like temperature stability, copper fouling reducing agents, flash suppressants, and granule shapes and sizes that are either condusive to volumetric metering or that demand trickling to meter by mass.
Another factor to consider is case capacity and powder bulk. 223 cases vary in their capacity by make and some powders, especially the slower burn rate powders can take up a lot of case volume. Sometimes it's not possible to fit the desired powder mass into a case under a bullet. The 223 case is pretty small.
Check out videos by Johnny's Reloading Bench because he does extensive testing of numerous powders using 55 grain bullets -- Bob's bullets in particular, but he also compares them to several other 55 gr. bullets.
Check out natoreloading.com and the 5.56 section because they evaluate numerous powders.
Consider what your goals are: accuracy, velocity, some balance of both... there are trade-offs. Single-based extruded powders of faster burn rates are the easy-button for accuracy, but double-based, ball powders often deliver higher velocities. I think the biggest factor in accuracy is the rifle, not the ammo. Bad ammo can ruin results, but awesome ammo isn't going to fix problems with the rifle.
The particular results in my work don't match what could be expected from the published reloading data. For example, I got much less velocity from X-Terminator than H-335, Benchmark, or StaBALL Match. The data does not show X-Terminator delivering low velocity compared to those other powders. Was my rifle not getting enough pressure out of book-max loads? Should I have kept pushing it past max to get the numbers expected? I decided not to. Should I tell you to forget about X-Terminator? You might get totally different results. I think Longdayjake wrote at one point it was his favorite powder from which he got the best results -- either X-Terminator or A2230, which used to be the same thing. A2230 has since been domesticated and is now produced by St. Marks in Florida. My sample of one is not enough for me to tell you that it won't work great for you.
StaBALL Match is a relatively new powder. I think it was introduced last year if I'm not mistaken. Generally speaking, it's best suited for heavier bullets. I had to pack a compressed load into Lake City brass (which has the highest capacity) to get good results from a 55 grain bullet.
H-335 is a traditional powder for 5.56x45. It's the closest thing to what the DoD has loaded for government use behind 55 and 62 grain projectiles since the 60's I think. Works fine.
Benchmark performed remarkably for me. It delivered impressive velocity that I was not at all expecting based on the published data. It was consistent and appeared accurate. natoreloading.com reported it as their go-to powder for 55 grain bullets. It was my least-favored going into the tests, but I can't ignore the results. It worked for me. If you're shooting 55 grain, it's worth trying a pound of it. It's not as cheap as some ball powders, so it might not be a fit for plinking as cheap as possible. But it's less costly than AR-Comp at the moment, so it's not like it's the most exorbitantly priced luxury out there. It's just not cheap.
I remember watching Johnny's Reloading Bench. I think it was that channel, or maybe it was Bolt Action Reloading (they're pretty similar). They were testing two different loads and one clearly beat the other. The narrator was really pleased because it's not unusual that we can do these exhaustive tests and find no real difference in the results, coming to the conclusion that it just doesn't matter and we're wasting our time. But every once in a while, there's an obvious distinction that this is better than that. The process of finding something better than another from 40-something possible powders could be pretty daunting. Will you find any difference between them? Will it matter for plinking? I guess that a lot of us reloaders think we will and that it does.