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The Glock 17 and Glock 19 are both boxy, plain black, nearly featureless pistols that changed the way we think about handguns. Just 34 parts were brought together by a guy who had never built a gun before to set a new standard for handgun design that would last for decades to come. I’m, of course, talking about when Gaston Glock contributed the most important new handgun design since the days of John M. Browning by introducing the Glock 17 and then the more compact Glock 19 soon after.
The idea of these pistols coming out in sequence likely influenced the now common practice of gunmakers dropping a full-size pistol and a compact version right on its heels. Polymer frames, striker-fired actions, no manual safety, double stack magazines — these current standards all go back to the G17 and G19.
But what are the important differences between the Glock 17 vs Glock 19? Somewhat surprisingly, these handguns are different enough that each has its own diehard set of fans. Here, we’ll get deep into the weeds on the differences, similarities, pros, and cons between these two iconic Glocks.
Glock 17 Gen5 Specs
- Introduced: 1982
- Designer: Gaston Glock
- Action: Glock Safe Action, striker fired
- Caliber: 9x19mm
- Weight with Empty Mag: 24.97 ounces
- Weight with Loaded Mag: 33.33 ounces
- Barrel Length: 4.49 inches
- Magazine Capacity: Standard – 17 rounds; Optional – 19 / 24 / 31 / 33 / 10
- Overall Length: 7.95 inches
- Slide Length: 7.32 inches
- Width: 1.34 inches
- Slide Width: 1 inch
- Height: 5.47 inches
- Sight Radius: 6.5 inches
Glock 19 Gen5 Specs
- Introduced: 1988
- Designer: Gaston Glock
- Action: Glock Safe Action, striker fired
- Caliber: 9x19mm
- Weight with Empty Mag: 23.63 ounces
- Weight with Loaded Mag: 30.16 ounces
- Barrel Length: 4.02 inches
- Magazine Capacity: Standard – 15 rounds; Optional – 17 / 10 / 24
- Overall Length: 7.95 inches
- Slide Length: 6.85 inches
- Width: 1.34 inches
- Slide Width: 1 inch
- Height: 5.04 inches
- Sight Radius: 6.02 inches
Glock 17 vs. Glock 19: Breaking It Down
The G17 and G19 are nearly identical — in terms of operation, they are identical. Many of the parts are interchangeable. The Glock 19 is simply a reduced-sized Glock 17 introduced in 1988 as a “compact” pistol meant for military and law enforcement use. There was a G18 in between, which was a select-fire version of the G17 made for military use that can fire in full auto.
The G19 has since become a favorite concealed carry gun, and many profess that its grip and overall size are easier for a broader range of shooters to handle well and carry comfortably, either open or concealed.
The barrel and grip are shorter by about a half inch, which results in a reduced magazine capacity (flush-fitting mag) of 15 rounds versus the G17’s 17 rounds. An extended capacity baseplate that adds space for two additional rounds is a popular G19 accessory for those with larger hands. In fact, some shooters used to cut down a G17 grip to G19 length so the gun would print less while still having a full-length G17 barrel and slide.
What made these early Glock models so attractive was the fact they could fire each other’s magazines if they were long enough to fit in the grip. The flush G19 mags were too short to fit a G17, for example, but the 17-round G17 mags could be used in a Glock 19, which can also use any mag designed for the Glock 17 and the rare select-fire Glock 18.
So the compact Glock cycled as reliably as the larger G17, the mass of the Glock 19’s slide is the same despite its reduced dimensions.
In many ways, the Glock 19 is seen as the more versatile and useful handgun. While the G17 has spawned a number of variants and separate models (like the Glock 34) and mods that make it a fantastic competition pistol, the Glock 19 has proved better suited for tactical and defensive roles.
The Glock 19 has long been a favorite of U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) operators who get to choose their loadout beyond the standard issue kit. The Glock 19 Gen4 MOS (modular optic system) was actually designated by SOF as the Mk27 MOD 2 pistol.
Interestingly, when the U.S. military launched its XM17 Modular Handgun System competition in 2015 to find a sidearm to replace the aging Beretta M9, Glock sent neither a Glock 17 nor a Glock 19 as its entry, but a new model that was a hybrid of both.
The Glock 19X was essentially a Glock 19 slide and barrel on a Glock 17-sized frame (a hack that Glock owners had been doing for years), all finished in a distinctly peanut-butter-like tan color.
While Glock ultimately lost the MHS competition and the lucrative military contract to the SIG Sauer P320, which became the M17 pistol, the Glock 19X was released on the commercial market, only it didn’t have the manual safety required by the military. The Glock 19X actually spawned a new line of guns that pair longer grips with shorter slides, like the subcompact Glock 43X and the Glock 45, which Glock calls “crossover” models.
Read our full guide of Best Glocks, here.
The Birth of the P80 and Glock 17
When Gaston Glock set out to build a new kind of handgun at the dawn of the 1980s, he wasn’t a John Browning type churning out design after design with more refinements each time. He had zero experience in gun design. What he did know about, however, was advanced synthetic polymers. His background was key to the design of the Glock 17 and would become a cornerstone of the entire company.
In 1980, the Austrian military began looking for a new duty pistol. Their personnel were still carrying the WWII-era Walther P38. The military eventually announced some criteria, including a 9mm chambering.
Gaston heard about the search for a new military pistol, and since he didn’t know a whole lot about building guns, he surrounded himself with people who did. He gathered leading handgun experts from all over Europe with military, law enforcement, and sport-shooting backgrounds. The goal was to articulate what features shooters of the day wanted in a modern handgun made for combat.
Three months later, he had a prototype in hand that made extensive use of modern manufacturing techniques and synthetic materials — more than any handgun had yet dared. Not only did this keep the design simple, but it also reduced cost. In-house, the pistol was designated as the Glock 17, but when it was adopted by the Austrian Army later in 1982, it was designated as the Pistole 80, or P80.
Dispelling Glock G17 Myths
You will come across some myths about the G17’s name and where it came from that sound pretty convincing. No doubt you’ve read online that the name comes from the fact that the OG pistol had a 17-round magazine capacity. It’s certainly true that that standard mag for a Glock 17 holds 17 rounds, but that isn’t where the name comes from. After all, the Glock 19 doesn’t hold 19 rounds, now does it?
The more rare but equally untrue explanation is that the Austrian military had 17 requirements in its solicitation for a new sidearm, and the G17 checked all those boxes. Again, not true.
The fact is, the Glock 17 got its name because it represented the 17th patent procured by Gaston Glock’s company. That’s it. And that’s why the Glock model numbers don’t have anything to do with size, chambering, or anything else that resembles logic.
You might also hear that the Glock was the first pistol with a polymer frame. Again, not true. One could say it was the first successful handgun made with a polymer frame and be reasonably accurate.
The first commercially available handgun with a polymer frame was the futuristic-looking (and many would say hideous and Hi-Point-esque) VP70 produced by Heckler & Koch in 1970, a full 12 years before the G17 was introduced. Not only that, but the straight-blowback VP70 was extremely light (28.9 ounces) and had a double-stack magazine with an 18-round capacity. It even had a spring-loaded striker instead of a hammer.
Unlike the Glock, the trigger was double-action only, so it was a fairly heavy trigger pull. This gun also had a fun quirk — the military version, the VP70M, included a detachable stock that could be used as a holster, just like the old Mauser C96. It also had a fun switch that would allow the pistol to fire in 3-round burst mode, but only when the stock was attached.
It even had the same goal as the Glock, to be a fairly simple handgun with few components that would be easy to use and affordable for average people. The “VP” in the name stands for Volkspistole, literally “people’s pistol” and it was made not for a military contract but for an expected Soviet push into West Germany at the time.
While it wasn’t widely successful, and its heavy trigger gave it a bad reputation, H&K produced the VP70 and its variants for almost 20 years until 1989.
Glock 17 vs Glock 19, Key Features
The Glock 17 and Glock 19 are both short-recoil operated, locked breech pistols that use a modified cam-lock system adopted from the 9mm Hi-Power pistol that was mostly designed by John Browning. So, there is a bit of Browning’s work present in every Glock.
The Glock locking mechanism includes a linkless, vertically tilting barrel paired with a rectangular breech that locks into the slide’s ejection port, much like SIG’s pistols.
Protective Coatings
Glock has incorporated innovative coatings to protect the steel parts of its guns, another product of Gaston Glock’s proficiency with modern materials. There were also design elements meant to increase the pistol’s ability to operate in adverse conditions.
The Striker Action
Whereas the striker-action on the VP70 had a heavy trigger because it was responsible for both fully cocking the striker and releasing the sear to fire the gun, Glock’s system fixed this problem.
When a Glock’s slide is racked, it brings the trigger to the half-cock position. When the trigger is pressed, it cocks the striker the rest of the way and then releases the sear, allowing the striker to move forward and fire a round. The firing pin is then captured in the half-cock position at the end of the firing cycle for subsequent shots.
This process, known as the Glock Safe Action trigger, makes the overall trigger pull lighter and smoother, and it’s also the reason that, after the chamber is cleared, a Glock trigger must be pulled to disengage the half-cocked striker before the gun can be disassembled.
The slide includes an external, spring-loaded claw extractor and a metal ejector pinned to the housing of the trigger mechanism. Glocks made after 2002 have a differently shaped extractor that also serves as a loaded-chamber indicator that protrudes slightly to indicate a loaded round.
The Polymer Frame
Now, let’s get to the most controversial part of the Glock — its polymer frame. The gun got a weird reputation with bad connotations in the 1980s when Glocks were still rare on this side of the Atlantic. People called it a “plastic gun” or said it was made of ceramic and was designed to avoid metal detectors.
This idea was reinforced by a quote from John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard 2 (1990) that the media latched onto during the push for the Brady Bill that was ultimately enacted in 1993:
“That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is?” McClane says of the handguns used by terrorists in the movie. “It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. Doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines, here, and it costs more than you make in a month.”
Not one thing in that quote is accurate, but at the time, most Americans didn’t know a damn thing about Glocks, and many believed it. But you can’t totally blame the movie. In 1988, congress passed the Undetectable Firearms Act that outlawed the manufacture or import of any guns that could pass through a metal detector. That was two years before the movie came out, so this idea about the Glock was already floating around out there.
A “Plastic Gun”
The Glock frame, magazine body, and other components are made from a super strong nylon-based polymer that Gaston Glock invented, called Polymer 2. It was formulated for high durability and was more resilient than steel alloys. It’s also resistant to shock, caustic liquids, and temperature extremes that would warm steel frames or make them brittle.
The frames are made through an injection molding process that embeds four hardened steel rails in the polymer that act as guide rails for the slide, two at the rear of the frame and a pair above and in front of the trigger guard. The trigger guard is squared off and checkered on all models. The frame features a grip angle of 109 degrees, somewhere between a 1911 and a Luger.
Despite what John McClane says, Polymer 2 totally shows up on x-ray machines, and most of the Glock 17 and Glock 19’s weight comes from steel components.
The pistols have a low slide profile, resulting in a bore axis far lower than the SIG P226, another popular 9mm pistol of the late 1980s and 1990s. This helps reduce muzzle rise and felt recoil for faster shooting and better target reacquisition between shots.
The slide and its distinctive, brutalistic, rectangular shape is CNC machined from a block of steel.
The barrel and slide were hardened using a proprietary process called Tenifer, which was applied with a high temperature nitride bath. The Tenifer treatment was highly resistant to wear, corrosion, weather, and even salt water and sweat. Because the coating actually penetrates the steel, it retains these properties even when the visible finish wears. The nitriding is topped with a decorating Parkerized surface finish.
In 2010, Glock switched from the high-temp bath nitriding to a gas nitriding process that hasn’t been revealed to the public.
All of these features are the same on the Glock 19.
Simplicity In Motion
The Glock 17 and Glock 19 both break down fully into only 34 parts. For regular maintenance, the guns break down into five major components: the barrel, the slide, the frame, the magazine, and the recoil-spring assembly.
The barrel is hammer forged with right-handed twist polygonal rifling (.45 ACP and .45 GAP models use octagonal polygonal rifling). New lines of Glock pistols like the G43 use the Glock Marksmanship Barrel, which has a deeper rifling pattern.
“Glock Doesn’t Have a Safety”
The Glock 17 and Glock 19, along with the company’s other handgun models, do not come with any kind of manual thumb safety, nor is it an option. Many shooters see this as a big positive. It reduces training time for those new to the Glock platform and reduces a step that requires fine motor skills when drawing a handgun to make it ready to fire.
But Glocks do, indeed, have a safety. In fact, they have three independent safety mechanisms that are the other components in the Glock “Safe Action.”
There’s the external trigger safety: that little tab that protrudes from the center of the trigger. When pressed, it activates the trigger bar and connector. There are also two automatic internal safeties: a firing pin safety and a drop safety. The firing pin safety is a steel pin that blocks the firing pin channel until it is pushed upward and releasing the firing pin when the trigger is activated.
The drop safety guides the trigger bar in a ramp released during the trigger pull. Each safety is disengaged in sequence when the trigger is depressed, and then they all re-engage when the trigger is released.
Glock 17 vs Glock 19, Which Is Better?
So which is better? Well, that all depends on what the gun will be used for.
The Glock 17 has a higher capacity when using a flush mag and a slightly longer barrel and sight radius, so there is more ammo and better accuracy potential with iron sights. For a duty gun in a holster, it’s ideal. For some, a G17 is comfortable in the hand and concealable in an IWB holster, so that’s what they carry.
If you’re looking for a competition gun, the G17 is a good base. In fact, one of the earliest Glock variants was the long-slide G17L meant for competitive shooting, which morphed into the G34. And, of course, there are all the customized Glock race guns out there.
When it comes to law enforcement and military use, with extended baseplates, you get the same capacity out of a G19, which is a little lighter and a little shorter, so it can also be concealed when necessary. This is the entire reason a separate, compact configuration of the M17 was adopted by the U.S. military as the M18.
For those fully focused on CCW, the G19 is more concealable for more people, while the G17 is just a bit too bulky for many.
So, in the end, it’s not that the Glock 19 is better than the Glock 17, or vice versa, but that they are each better at different handgun tasks. That said, the Glock 19 is a bit more versatile than its slightly bigger brother. But in the end, every person has to shoot what they shoot best and carry what carries best. The hope is that both can be found in the same gun.
