Mechanics

Most of what our 24 mechanics pages describe is a way of turning time into money, and the honest way to compare them is by what each one costs before it returns a dollar. Cheat codes, the stock market and the Online money missions cost nothing to start. The Diamond Casino wants $500 at the front desk. Story-mode property starts at a $30,000 garage and ends at a $150 million golf club. The Online businesses start above a million and, in the case of a fully upgraded bunker, run to $2.4 million before the first sale mission. That ladder is how this guide is arranged, and within each rung the pages are grouped by whether they belong to story mode or GTA Online.

Two warnings apply throughout, both from the pages themselves. Any console cheat code blocks saving and achievements for the session it is active in, and several of the exploits described were patched, nerfed or limited to older consoles, which the relevant sections note. Our cheats and secrets roundup carries the older console lists in one place.

The buy-in for every system

Nothing down: story mode

The free systems are where most players start. The cheat codes page is the original Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 button list, health and armour, weapons, invincibility, wanted level up and down, slow motion, weather and a dozen vehicle spawns from the Buzzard to the Trashmaster, plus two non-code tricks: gold on every gun range challenge for 25 percent off Ammu-Nation, and blowing yourself up after buying upgrades to keep them and get the money back. The cheats list extends that to PC text codes (PAINKILLER, TURTLE, SKYFALL, MAKEITRAIN) and the Xbox One and PS4 layouts, including moon gravity, fast swim and the PCJ-600. Both pages repeat the rule: no saves and no achievements while a cheat is on.

Three more free pages are reference rather than reward. Websites lists every address the in-game phone browser accepts, from Legendary Motorsport and Warstock to the Leonora Johnson murder site and a dozen jokes. Easter eggs collects around forty references, the Mount Gordo ghost between 11 PM and midnight, Bigfoot behind a tree in the O'Neil mission, the LOST hatch, the Playboy Mansion and the sunken saucer that our UFO page maps. Wanted levels explains the five-star system that replaced the old six: one star tries to arrest you, two blocks roads, three shoots to kill and is instant for killing an officer or walking onto the airport tarmac, four brings the FIB, riot police and tear gas, and five adds NOOSE roadblocks and helicopters. Knowing which act earns which star is what keeps the store robberies on our quests guide at two stars.

The story's free money pages come in two temperaments. Easy money is the legitimate ten: rob stores, blow open security vans, buy a business, collect the four collectible sets, play the stock market, do Strangers and Freaks and random events, rob ATM users, race, dive for hidden packages, and finish the heists. Infinite money is the exploit: pick up a $25,000 underwater package, switch character while the green text is still on screen, switch back, and the game adds the sum again; when the text fades the case has respawned. Its weapons half has you buy out an Ammu-Nation mid-mission and die to a grenade, keeping the guns and recovering the cash. Both point at the twelve cases on our hidden packages page.

The stock market costs only what you choose to stake. The stock market page explains the two exchanges: LCN moves on in-game events and can be pushed by wrecking a rival's assets (its rivals table pairs CoolBeans with BeanMachine, Burgershot with Up-n-Atom, Redwood with Debonaire and so on), while BAWSAQ moves on what the whole Social Club community does, with 3 to 6 real hours of window and weekend peaks. Its rules of thumb are to sell LCN at about 10 percent and BAWSAQ at 30 to 40. The exploits page is the schedule: BET before the hotel hit, then stop and finish the story so every character is rich, then DEB before the multi-target hit and sell about eight in-game hours later, RWC before the third for almost 200 percent after a 48-hour skip, FRT before the vice hit, Vapid after the bus hit, Goldcoast before the construction hit, and TNK before the Great Ocean Highway hitchhiker. Current-generation payouts were cut from about 80 percent to 60 to 65. The one story page with a real price tag is prostitutes, $50 to $100 at night near Downtown, Vespucci and Vinewood, needed once for 100 percent, with a sex appeal cheat and a note that some cars are too small.

Nothing down: GTA Online

Online's free tier starts before you have a character. Character creation picks four grandparents to generate a face, then spends 20 waking hours a day across sleeping, family, sport, legal work, the couch, partying and illegal work, each of which raises and lowers stats: sport for strength, stamina and lung capacity at the cost of shooting and driving, the couch for flying and driving at the cost of the physical three. Character transfer moves a console character to PC through a linked Social Club account, carrying earned cash, rank, jobs, property and achievements but not the leaderboard rank, after which the two copies progress separately. The car transfer glitch is a ten-step Los Santos Customs door trick from the PS3 and Xbox 360 era for bringing a modded story car into Online.

Stats and leveling covers the seven attributes and their cheapest training: triathlons and 18-yard runs for stamina, twenty punches per percent of strength, stealth kills on a mission for stealth without a wanted level, and a solo airport race set to 30 to 50 laps for driving in half an hour. Level up fast is about the 120 ranks: races pay RP even in defeat, parachute jumps pay 600 to 700 RP in three minutes, and Gerald's Death Metal mission at Rank 6 pays 1,000 RP and about $3,000 every three to five minutes, with Violent Duct joining at Rank 22 and the RT-spam replay trick keeping the loop going. The ranks these unlock, 15 and 18 for Survival and Gang Attacks, are on our quests guide.

Money farming is the Online equivalent of the easy money page. Fencing a mid-range stolen car at Los Santos Customs pays $6,000 to $11,000 (a Dubsta $7,000, a Felon $9,500) once a day, or every 48 minutes for a stored high-end car. Missions scale with rank: Gerald's cocaine run at Rank 6 for $3,000, No Hay Bronca at Rank 9 and Violent Duct at Rank 15 for $9,000, A Titan of a Job at 24 for $10,000, Base Invaders at 27 for $25,000, and Martin Madrazo's Mixed Up with Coke and Rooftop Rumble at Ranks 45 and 75 for the best hourly rates on the page. Bank it through the Maze Bank website on your phone, since anything over $5,000 in your pocket is lost on death, or pay $100 for passive mode. The Online exploits page covers the same two Madrazo missions plus two console glitches, reselling a car through the Xbox Store menu and robbing a liquor store that resets, both from the Xbox 360 era.

$500: the Diamond Casino

The casino is the first system with a fixed entry fee. Casino VIP puts it at $500 at the front desk on Vinewood Park Drive, which opens the basic games, and at $1.5 million for the cheapest penthouse, which opens high-stakes tables, the VIP area and Ms. Baker's missions. Casino chips explains what the membership buys: 5,000 welcome chips either way, a cashier selling chips one to one with a 20,000-a-day cap (50,000 for penthouse owners), a 1,000-chip daily visitor bonus, the Lucky Wheel, slots at 5 to 500 chips a spin paying up to five times, and Inside Track horses every five minutes. Its blackjack trick bets 50,000, walks away after the first win, saves by changing outfit, and disconnects before the save if the hand loses. Hosting casino missions needs the penthouse and an invite-only session, which makes you host of everything you launch and skips the lobby wait; the six missions reward the armoured Paragon R on our casino vehicles page. The building itself and the Loose Cheng mission are on our Diamond Casino location page.

$30,000 to $150 million: story-mode property

The properties page is the only story system with a full price list, and its breakeven column is the reason to read it. Franklin's Smoke on the Water is the best buy in the game: $204,000 for $9,300 a week, paid back in 22 weeks. His Downtown Cab Co. ($200,000, $2,000 a week, 100 weeks) also gives free cab rides, and his Los Santos Customs ($349,000, 218 weeks) gives free modifications. Michael's cinemas are the trap: the Doppler at $10 million and Ten Cent at $20 million both take 76 weeks, the Tivoli at $30 million takes 211. Shared buys run from the $80,000 Hen House at $800 a week through Pitchers ($750,000, $7,000), Hookies ($600,000, $4,700) and Tequi-la-la ($2 million, $16,500) to the $150 million Golf Club at $264,500 a week. Trevor's McKenzie hangar earns per smuggling run rather than per week, the Vanilla Unicorn is free with Hang Ten, and storage-only purchases include the $30,000 Vinewood Garage, $1,378,000 airport hangars, $419,850 helipads and $75,000 marina slips. The $250,000 Sonar Collections Dock pays $23,000 per barrel on our nuclear waste page. Every earner also needs its Property Management missions kept up or income falls.

$1.1 million and up: GTA Online businesses

Online's businesses cost more than any story property except the cinemas and golf club, and they pay back on a different clock. Nightclub income follows a club priced on our nightclubs page at $1,135,000 to $1.7 million. The legal side pays $100 to $10,000 a day by popularity into a safe that holds $70,000, against $1,750 upkeep every 48 hours and Tony's 10 percent. The illegal side is the point: technicians pull goods from your other businesses into one warehouse, where a unit sells for $20,000 (cocaine), $10,000 (hangar and CEO crates), $8,500 (meth), $5,000 (weapons), $3,500 (cash), $1,500 (weed) or $1,000 (documents), delivered in a Speedo, Mule or Pounder. Five technicians on the five best lines and a sale every 20 hours is the page's method. The $1,375,000 Terrorbyte adds client jobs from $30,000.

Gunrunning is the top of the ladder. The gunrunning business page prices bunkers at $1,165,000 to $2,375,000 from Maze Bank Foreclosures, describes the three mission types (set-up, resupply, sell) run from the Disruption Logistics laptop, and adds the $1,225,000 Mobile Operations Center that unlocks the missions on our quests guide. The profits page turns that into arithmetic: research and production share one supply pool, so research first and then switch everything to production; a bunker holds 100 units and a delivery vehicle 25, so solo sellers should hold to one vehicle; the sale zone changes the price ($5,000 against $7,500 for the same stock); and a full hold worth about $7,000 a unit produces roughly $770,000 in 25.7 hours, or $1,155,000 with the 1.5x bonus for selling far away, which the page works out to about $44,947 an hour. The vehicles the bunker builds are on our weaponized vehicles page.

Frequently asked questions

Do cheats stop me saving?

Yes. Both cheat pages say saving and achievements are disabled while any cheat is active. Reload a save to clear them.

What is the best story property to buy first?

Smoke on the Water for Franklin, at $204,000 with a 22-week payback. Everything Michael can buy takes 76 weeks or more.

Which Online business pays back fastest?

The pages do not give a single answer, but the gunrunning profits page's $44,947 an hour figure is the only hourly rate stated for a business, and the nightclub's passive safe caps at $10,000 a day. Where those businesses sit and cost is on the locations guide, and the GTA 5 hub keeps the story and Online money systems apart.