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The 47 best GTA 5 mods

Here are the top GTA 5 mods so you can keep the open-world experience fresh, weird, and exciting, even after a full decade in the sun.

gta v mods star wars

What are the best GTA 5 mods? There’s no need to trundle through mod databases for dodgy links and unclear mod descriptions as we’ve done the legwork for you, hunting down the best and most popular GTA 5 mods for your enjoyment.

After a decade as one of the best PC games, the Grand Theft Auto 5 mod scene is more than just a few cheats and trainers – it’s rife with incredible additions, useful tweaks, and big transformations. If you’re considering adding a few little non-developer-approved improvements, take your pick from our list of the best available. Alternatively, if you’re looking to spice things up in multiplayer, head over to our GTA RP server guide, apply to join a roleplay server as an NPC, and live out your dreams of roaming the streets as a vigilante grandma… or whatever.

Here are the best GTA 5 mods:

A character in GTA 5 performs popular Fortnite animations, made possible with a GTA 5 mod.

Fortnite Emotes

The Fortnite Emote mod lets you perform all of your favorite animations in Epic Games’ battle royale game, from Take the L to Doze Dab. It even includes some emotes exclusive to collabs, such as the Attack on Titan run emotes and the Wakandan salute. Mod creator Victorch4 explains that this is made possible by retargeting animations from the Fortnite skeleton to the GTA 5 skeleton, ensuring a near-identical likeness.

Military personnel dressed in desert camo takes cover behind a wall in GTA 5 and fires wildly, shell casings falling to the ground around them.

Realistic Guns Sounds

Are you a little underwhelmed by the gunplay in GTA 5? The Realistic Guns Sounds mod takes audio from Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Battlefield, and other military FPS games to add an extra kick to your favorite guns. These sound effects comprise weapon fire as well as reloads, shell casing, melee attacks, and even weapon handling, to create a more immersive experience that’s perfect for military heads. It even comes with improved muzzle flash textures for that final dash of authenticity.

GTA 5 mods: The Just Cause 2 Eject + Parachute Thrusters mod.

Just Cause 2 Eject + Parachute Thrusters

GTA 5 is a giant sandbox full of ridiculous possibilities and plenty of mayhem, so it stands to reason that a Just Cause 2 mod would complement it perfectly. The Just Cause 2 Eject + Parachute Thrusters mod introduces Rico Rodriguez’s signature grappling hook and parachute, as well as the ability to eject out of your turbo-charged supercar at high speeds and take in the explosive havoc it wreaks in your wake.

GTA 5 mods: The Prison mod.

Prison

The GTA 5 Prison Mod takes getting busted to a whole new level. Instead of the standard ‘game over’ screen, you’re shipped off to Bolingbroke Penitentiary state prison, where an orange jumpsuit is waiting for you. You can bail yourself out at any time, or you can make a daring escape by starting a riot between the prisoners and guards as a distraction. Serving your sentence quietly would be far too dull.

GTA 5 mods: The Mayhem Carmageddon mod.

Mayhem / Carmageddon

The Mayhem / Carmageddon mod delivers the chaotic vehicular combat from our favorite retro driving game, infecting the motorists of San Andreas with a serious case of road rage. With this mod enabled, you can expect copious explosions, cars flipping through the air, and a lot of public property damage in your near future. We also highly recommend pairing this mod with GTA5 cheats that grant invincibility to you and your vehicle – creator EnabledHD assures us that we “won’t last a minute without it.”

GTA 5 mods: The Hulk script mod.

HULK script

If you fancy yourself a bit more meaner and greener than everyone’s favorite genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, then Hulk script mod is the one for you. This mod puts you in the ripped purple pants of the big guy himself, imbuing you with all the super strength required to Hulk Smash your way through San Andreas. As Hulk, you can grab helicopters right out of the sky, scale buildings, and even use a lamppost as a baseball bat. We hope the city has insurance.

GTA 5 mods: The Mobile Radio mod.

Mobile Radio

We love the GTA radio, so much so that it can be hard to tear ourselves away from the driver’s seat when our favorite song comes on. Thankfully, with the Mobile Radio mod enabled, you can take the tunes with you on the go. It’s a simple mod, but it really does make all the difference.

The GTA VIce Cry Remastered greatly expands the base game with new locations, making it one of the best GTA 5 mods.

GTA Vice Cry: Remastered – GTA Vice City

This GTA 5 mod should keep us entertained while we wait for the GTA 6 release date. Vice Cry: Remastered brings Vice City into the modern era with a complete remaster of the Vice City map from Lunchxbles. Take this remaster mod a step further  Tommy Vercetti with a separate mod to take a step back into the neon dashed waterfront that captures 80s Florida so well.

Best GTA 5 mods -a man is walking inside a building for a company.

Open All Interiors

GTA 5’s Los Santos may be huge, but there are still plenty of closed-off areas. Frequently you’ll see huge tourist attractions that look like they’d be explorable, only to walk up and find the doors permanently locked. The GTA Open All Interiors mod opens up many previously locked buildings just for a little added authenticity.

Best GTA 5 mods - a helicopter flying over a lake in the sunset.

GTA 5 Redux

While GTA 5 Redux beautifully upgrades the streets of Los Santos with new weather, skies, and many lush 4K textures, this mod is more than just a visual overhaul. GTA 5 Redux also includes tweaks to vehicle handling, a reconfigured police system, and an improved weapon feel to make the gameplay feel more refined after all these years.

A view of a road with some cars and palm trees in the GTA V Remastered Enhanced GTA 5 mod.

GTA V Remastered: Enhanced

While GTA V still looks great, it’s still a ten-year-old game. GTA V Remastered: Enhanced brings photorealistic textures and thousands of new props to Los Santos and its surrounding areas. There are different versions to pick from, depending on whether you’re looking to modify your single-player experience or create your own multiplayer server, so be sure to grab the right one.

FiveM

Immerse yourself in the world of GTA 5 by acting out your nine-to-five job as a shop worker in Los Santos, or hunting down criminals as part of LSPD, roleplaying servers completely refresh the GTA 5 experience. Different RP servers require different mods, but the most popular from what we’ve seen is FiveM. Check out our guide to the best RP servers and how to join them here.

The main character is now a fat red tourist with a pocket fan, walking in Los Santos' backstreets. He is changing because of one of the best GTA 5 mods - the character menu mod.

Character Menu

If you’d rather keep your roleplaying experience confined to single-player, you can run around the world wreaking havoc as an NPC instead. Character Menu allows you to turn into any NPC in the game – even animals! There are over 500 to choose from, with 350 being further customizable.

Best GTA 5 mods - a woman is stopped by two cops on a sidewalk. One is looking at her ID and the other is on a bike.

World of Variety

The vanilla story world can get quite boring once you’ve spent a few hundred hours in it. World of Variety adds vehicles and assets from GTA Online into single-player GTA 5 to make the world look and feel more alive and varied. The Gangs of Los Santos and Lively Bahama Mamas mods are integrated too.

Best GTA 5 mods - a man is hiding from the cops behind a building.

Crime and Police Rebalance & Enhancement

You’ve only got to accidentally clip a cyclist with your wing mirror in GTA 5, and suddenly the cops are chasing you down. No dialing 911, no getting away with a caution. It’s jail time for you, and you’ll be filled with bullets before the cuffs go on. Some would argue that this is a realistic depiction of US policing, but it isn’t fair gameplay.

The Crime and Police Rebalance & Enhancement mod adjusts the detection system – an NPC has to report your crime first, and you can prevent them from calling it in. Enemy firearm accuracy scales with speed, so in a car chase, they won’t be hitting you with pinpoint precision. Silencers are more effective too, allowing you to use stealth much more effectively. Your wanted level is also more logical; getting a single star won’t result in the entire LSPD hunting you down.

Best GTA 5 mods - a deer is walking through the streets of Los Santos in the middle of the day.

Native Trainer

Technically a cheat more than a mod, Native Trainer delves deep into the source code of GTA 5 to allow you to turn on and off various exciting settings. Fancy enjoying a little low gravity? Turn it on from an in-game menu and easily bunny-hop down the Vinewood hills with little danger to your health. You can also swap out character models and become a cat for the day. Native Trainer comes lumped in with most Script Hook V downloads, so chances are you already have the file.

Best GTA 5 mods - the first person view of a man holding a gun in the middle of a street.

Expanded Field Of View

When playing the game in first-person, GTA 5’s field of view can feel a little restrictive. There’s a slider in the camera settings menu that allows you to alter it, but the highest setting is a measly 55 degrees. The GTA 5 Expanded Field of View mod remedies this oversight, allowing you to set your FOV to any value you fancy. You need to edit the fov.txt file to do so, but with a little fiddling, you’ll be able to see Los Santos more clearly.

Best GTA 5 mods: a cop has pulled over Michael, who was driving a black car presumably because of his speed.

Pull Me Over and Better Chases+

As we’ve mentioned previously, the way policing in GTA 5 is handled is hardly realistic. So long as you don’t crash into any vehicles, you can drive at max speed in the wrong lane on the highway and get away with it. With the Pull Me Over mod, patrolling cop cars will attempt to pull you over and give you a ticket for speeding, running a red light, driving against traffic, and many more.

The Better Chases+ mod takes this one step further, introducing arrest warrants that come into effect should you evade capture by the police, and granting LCPD far more responses based on your criminal actions. Traffic violations won’t be tricky to dodge, but hitting a pedestrian will stir up quite the chase.

Best GTA 5 mods - two men with assault rifles standing on an intersection. One has a yellow gang t-shirt on.

Gang and Turf

One of the best features in GTA San Andreas was the turf war system that allowed Grove Street Families to steadily take over all of Los Santos. The Gang and Turf mod brings this system to GTA 5. You’ll be able to control a gang with a name and members of your choice, fighting other gangs for complete control of the city.

Best GTA 5 mods - a member of the Los Santos Police Department First Response team, standing on a street at dusk.

LSPD First Response

Ever wanted to play for the other team? LSPD First Response transforms GTA V into one of the best police games out there. To get started, head to a police station and create a character before heading out onto the mean streets and responding to robberies, dynamic crime events, and car chases. Find out what it’s like to be on the other end of a police chase!

Best GTA 5 mods - a gunman is aiming at a bank teller at her desk.

ATM Robberies & Bank Heists

Satisfy your criminal cravings with ATM Robberies & Bank Heists, perfect for that handy injection of funds when your bank balance gets a little low. This mod lets you steal cash from any of 47 ATMs or 10 banks, but you’ll need to escape to a safe house to secure your haul.

Best GTA 5 mods - a man is shooting at a Jeep in a country lane.

Complex Control

Inspired by the best battle royale games, the Complex Control mod overhauls GTA 5 gameplay by putting you in the shoes of a procedurally generated avatar equipped with several special abilities who must battle against NPCs in an ever-shrinking map. By also incorporating rogue-lite elements to keep things interesting, Complex Control is an incredibly fun and challenging addition to the game.

Basic Needs

This mod adds another layer of realism to GTA 5, assuming that’s what you’re after. Turn GTA 5 into a survival game by adding some Basic Needs. Having fun is only as important as eating and sleeping, so keep filling your face and napping.

Best GTA 5 mods - two rival gangs shooting at each other from their cars in the middle of suburbia.

The Red House

GTA 5 isn’t exactly short of missions, but you’ll run out eventually. Thankfully modders are here to keep you well-stocked. The Red House mod adds more than 20 new missions, including assassinations and gang clean-outs to the game, plus a new heist.

Best GTA 5 mods - a player kitted out with bright clothing in the middle of an underground market, holding a custom assault rifle.

GTA RPG

With its heavy story and huge world, GTA 5 is almost an RPG. Don’t settle for almost, though; swap genres entirely with the GTA RPG mod. It adds a questing system to the game, a character creator, and even branching dialogue trees. Forget about making big bucks, earn big XP instead.

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GTA 5 enhanced train driver

All aboard! The GTA 5 enhanced train driver mod allows you to hop inside the cabin and take control of the infamous GTA 5 train. Speed up, slow down. Stop. Go. All of the main train driving options are available to you.

Best GTA 5 mods - a man riding a motorbike through the snowy streets of North Yankton.

Travel to North Yankton

Want to revisit the Fargo-like area of North Yankton featured in GTA 5’s prologue? The game doesn’t give you access to this area once you’ve advanced past that first mission and wound up in Los Santos. Fortunately, the Travel to North Yankton mod allows you to fly in via Los Santos Airport, and even pick up and throw snowballs. Festive!

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The Army Spawns At Five Stars

In older Grand Theft Auto games, the armed forces would arrive to take you down if your murderous rampage went on too long and reached a five-star wanted level. GTA 5 ditched this feature, but the Army Spawns at Five Stars mod puts it back in place. Get five-star notoriety, and you’ll be pursued by the nation’s finest. The mod’s pragmatic title sounds weirdly poetic too.

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Fuel Script V

To add more realism to your urban sandbox, why not make vehicles burn fuel? The Fuel Script V mod adds tons of features, including a fuel bar above the minimap and a working interior fuel gauge. Ensure you’re fuelled up before engaging in a wild chase because running dry with six cops ramming into your tail end won’t end well.

Best GTA 5 mods - a red truck with a yellow cargo hold driving down a freeway.

Trucking Missions

One of the most beloved PC-exclusive games is Euro Truck Simulator, proving we somehow adore doing mundane tasks in games for zero pay. The Trucking Missions mod brings the joy of Euro Truck to Los Santos and the surrounding area. It’s a far more dangerous world than the motorways of Europe, that’s for sure.

Best GTA 5 mods - Franklin is standing next to a destroyed red car.

Better Deformation + More Durable Cars

Because no one in GTA 5 can drive properly, you can spend quite a lot of time involved in car crashes. They’re never quite as spectacular as they could be, though. The Better Deformation + More Durable Cars mod makes car destruction an art form and encourages you to make a mess of your vehicles.

An intersection and a small house show off the realistic visuals of NaturalVision Remastered, one of the best GTA 5 mods.

NaturalVision Remastered

The goal for NaturalVision Remastered (or NVR for short) is to make GTA 5 look visually similar to Southern California. The mod creators have carried out extensive research on both Los Santos and Los Angeles, spending more than 4,000 hours so far on the mod.

The Intensity ENB GTA 5 mod boosts the colors of everything, including the Deludamol logo of this white van.

Intensity ENB

If you’re sick of muted colors or gritty realism, the Intensity ENB is for you. Rather than upscaling the game with the highest resolution textures and shaders possible, Intensity ENB ups the vibrancy with intense god rays and a bright color scheme. Maybe grab some sunglasses before installing this mod – watch out for those shiny reflections.

Best GTA 5 mods - a view of a digital version of the County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner Coroner building.

Real California Architecture

It’s all well and good making GTA 5 look as close to real-life California as possible, but the architecture in-game is still pretty gamified. Real California Architecture aims to replicate buildings from the real world in-game, from One California Plaza to the iconic Hollywood sign.

Best GTA 5 mods - a sportscar is parked next to a helicopter in an airfield.

R*enhancer Photorealism

GTA 4’s champion mod was Icenhancer, a graphical mod that made Liberty City look genuinely real. If you’re looking for a similar effect in GTA 5, R*enhancer Photorealism is the way to go. It’s a lighting overhaul that adjusts atmospheric effects and works wonders on car reflections.

SweetFX GTA graphics enhancer

Not strictly a custom GTA 5 mod, SweetFX is a graphics post-processing injector that adds various fancy visual effects to games. It can be used on pretty much anything, but tests on GTA 5 reveal that it runs pretty much perfectly. The enhanced look removes the washed-out feel the game can sometimes have, providing bolder and deeper colors.

Best GTA 5 mods - some zombies spawning in Los Santos.

Zombies

Everyone else is making zombie games, so why not GTA? The GTA Zombies mod allows you to fill the streets of Los Santos with crowds of the walking dead for round-based survival. Fend off each successive wave of corpses for bigger and better rewards.

GTA 5 mods - Spider-Man is standing outside a TV store and is ready to fight an off-screen enemy.

Spider-Man V

What’s the point in having a realistic city sandbox if you can’t roleplay as the world’s favorite web shooter? The Spider-Man V mod allows you to swing from buildings, use webs to zip forward, and crawl along walls. Amazing.

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Gravity Gun

It’s a well-known fact that if a third-person game exists on Steam, there legally has to be a gravity gun mod for it. We don’t make the rules. The Gravity Gun mod allows you to aim with the game’s stun gun to make objects hover in the air, or blast through the skies.

Best GTA 5 mods - Chief Wiggum's police car from The Simpsons.

The Simpsons Springfield Police Pack

Police are often associated with fear and keeping order in various unruly towns and cities, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The Simpsons Springfield Police Pack replaces the fuzz’s various vintage cars and substitutes vehicles you’ll recognize from Springfield. There’s no sign of Chief Wiggum though, sadly.

Best GTA 5 mods - a car with jetpacks under its wheels is flying through the city, close to skyscrapers.

Vehicles Jetpack

It’s 2020, and we still don’t have flying cars. It’s a problem in the real world but not in Los Santos where, with the help of the Vehicles Jetpack mod, you can stick jetpacks on cars. Ignore traffic queues and get there on time.

Best GTA 5 mods - Iron Man is flying through Los Santos.

Iron Man Mark V

There’s no reason to trundle around Los Santos in a car when you could strap on some exoskeleton armor and blast off into the skies. That’s exactly what you can do with the Iron Man Mark V mod. You’ll also need the GTA 5 Iron Man Script, but as a bonus, you’ll also be able to check out the mini Hulkbuster Armour.

Best GTA 5 mods - the DeLorean is hovering in the sky in Los Santos.

Funny Vehicles

No one wants to drive normal cars, even if it’s the fastest car in GTA 5. Instead, we want to drive a DeLorean DMC-12 time machine or the Batmobile, or even fly a Tie Fighter. Install the Funny Vehicles mod and you can drive all these cars and more in GTA 5.

GTA 5 mods - a man freefalling with a parachute above Los Santos.

Nice Fly

Sick of having to track down one of those pesky jets or helicopters to take to the skies? The Nice Fly mod allows you to take off anywhere, equipping you with a parachute for when you want to land back on solid ground.

Best GTA 5 mods - a red power boat in the middle of the ocean. Skyscrapers can be seen in the background.

No Water + Tsunami + Atlantis

The amount of effort Rockstar put into designing Los Santos’s seabed is inversely proportional to the effort modders put into naming mods. That said, the No Water + Tsunami + Atlantis mod allows you to edit the game’s sea level to drain the oceans or flood the city, turning it into either Mad Max or Waterworld.

Best GTA 5 mods - Franklin is aiming his gun at two citizens who are firing shots at each other.

GTA 5 pedestrian riot

Harkening back to the old days of GTA 3’s cheat codes, the Pedestrian Riot mod causes all civilians to be aggressive towards you and one another. It also arms them with random weapons, resulting in all kinds of unpredictable madness. Try climbing to a safe vantage point and watching as the city tears itself apart.

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Ragdoll/Limp On Demand

Television, that antiquated thing where you passively observe other people doing things, has made so much money from people falling over. Bring the hilarity of candid camera to GTA 5 with the Ragdoll on Demand mod, giving you the ability to trigger the feature whenever you want. It even works in cutscenes, meaning you can add a touch of fun to even the most serious gangster business talks.

How do I install GTA 5 mods?

Installing GTA 5 mods is simple. Download the mod files and copy them into the main GTA 5 folder. If you’re using the Steam version of the game, the directory should look something like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto V

If you’re not using the Steam version, you’ll need to find the main game folder with the GTAV.exe file.

Some of the more complex mods require the installation of additional tools, such as Script Hook V. We’ve got information on how to install some of the more essential tools further down the page. Installation guides for any additional tools, and occasionally full installers, are available on mod download pages.

These advanced mods aren’t all guaranteed to work harmoniously together – by all means, don’t be afraid to give it a shot, but you’ve got the best chance of a successful mod installation when working with the vanilla game as a base.

Are GTA 5 mods safe to install and use?

As with any online game, activating mods comes with a risk. Rockstar has stated that PC single-player mods are allowed, and the company has an agreement with Take-Two Interactive not to take legal action against anyone using mods that are strictly single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property rights of third parties.

Many of these mods use ‘memory hooks’ to enable them to tinker with the fundamentals of GTA 5, and if you try to play GTA Online with them installed, you’ll be swiftly banned on suspicion of cheating. We recommend keeping a separate installation if you want to switch between GTA Online and a modded GTA 5 single-player experience frequently, and it’s always a good idea to back up your game files before making changes.

GTA 5 Script Hook V and how to install it

Since many of the biggest and most popular GTA 5 mods run scripts, Script Hook V is needed for most of the more complex mods you’ll be downloading. It’s an essential tool if you’re getting serious about modding GTA 5, so it’s important to know how to get it working.

You can download Script Hook V here, but links to the download go down all the time, so you might have to find a mirror or new link if the site doesn’t work.

To install the mod:

  • Download the ScriptHookV.dll file from your chosen website (be extra careful not to click any malicious links or ads).
  • Open the game’s main folder and paste into ScriptHookV.dll. This will be wherever GTA5.exe is located.
  • You’ll also need to have an ASI loader installed, which you can download separately, or use the one that comes with most downloads of Script Hook V. To install, paste dsound.dll into the game’s main folder.

Most downloads also come with ‘Native Trainer’. You don’t need this file, but it allows for easy activation of many GTA 5 cheats. To install, copy NativeTrainer.asi into the main game folder.

GTA 5 Community Script Hook V .Net and how to install it

A few mods require both the default version of Script Hook V and a different version that allows scripts in .NET language.

Installing this is slightly trickier than Script Hook V, so here are the steps to follow:

GTA 5 LUA plugin and how to install it

A few mods also require the LUA plugin, so depending on which you’re looking to install, it might be best to do this additional bit of housekeeping.

To install:

  • Download the LUA plugin (once again, be careful to click the right links).
  • Copy both the ‘scripts’ folder and the LUSA_SDK.asi file into your GTA 5 game directory.
  • For any mods that use .lua files, drop the files into the ‘addins’ folder inside the ‘scripts’ folder.

There may already be a few .lua files in the ‘addins’ folder when you download it. If you don’t need these it’s safe to delete them.

How to install GTA OpenIV tool

It can get pretty tricky to keep track of all these mods, and chances are you’ll run into a technical error or two along the way. If you want to make your life a little easier, or If making mods is more your thing, get your hands on OpenIV.

OpenIV was the toolset used to access and edit the game files of GTA 4 and Max Payne 3, but clever PC gamers have managed to get the program to unpack GTA 5. The latest version – OpenIV 4.0 – also supports Red Dead Redemption 2. Ultimately, OpenIV is a multi-purpose editor and archive manager, and several mods run far better on OpenIV than independently.

Those are all the best GTA 5 mods. There should be at least one mod there where you’ll find many hours of entertainment, and you can always add to that by using the best GTA 5 cheats and codes.  For those who wish to play GTA online, we have intel on this week’s GTA Online Podium car for you to win.