With the rapid global advancement of relativistic ultrafast electron diffraction systems

the impact of relativistic effects on electron scattering efficiency has attracted renewed attention. Recent reviews emphasize the scaling of the differential elastic-scattering cross-section with increasing electron energy. Although such observations are not formally incorrect

they can lead to a misperception of the relative scattering efficiency of relativistic electrons compared to that of their nonrelativistic counterparts. The scaling originates from analyses conducted in the angular domain

where the compression of the scattering angle (or solid angle ) with increasing energy creates an enhancement of the differential elastic-scattering cross-section

. In this work

we recast the problem in momentum-transfer space

where scattering is accurately accounted for. This transformation eliminates the angular compression artifact and reveals that high-energy scaling follows a simple dependence

with no intrinsic relativistic gain. We demonstrate this by directly integrating relativistic differential elastic-scattering cross-sections from ELSEPA and by applying a straightforward transformation of the well-known Mott–Massey formalism into -space. The results are general

with calculations performed for elements from carbon to gold and for energies between 50 and 5

000 keV. They reproduce the long-established trend in total elastic-scattering cross-sections

in which scattering strength decreases with increasing electron kinetic energy. Practically

at energies above roughly 50 keV

scattering is already dominated by the forward direction

and most of the scattered intensity falls within the acceptance range of typical ultrafast electron diffraction detectors.