Grand Theft Auto Online

Updated 28 October 2026 · Fan site. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.

Grand Theft Auto Online is the online multiplayer world of Grand Theft Auto V, made by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It launched on 1 October 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360 and is now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Up to 30 players share Los Santos and Blaine County, with heists, businesses and regular free updates.

What is GTA Online?

GTA Online is the persistent online side of Grand Theft Auto V. It uses the same map as the single-player game, but you play as a character you design yourself. You earn money and reputation by doing missions, races and jobs with or against other players. Rockstar has kept adding to it for more than a decade, mostly through free updates.

Up to 30 players share a session on PS4, Xbox One, PC and newer consoles. The original PS3 and Xbox 360 versions allowed 16. Players can also form crews to play together.

When did GTA Online come out?

It arrived two weeks after GTA V itself. Rockstar stopped new content for PS3 and Xbox 360 in September 2015 and shut those servers on 16 December 2021.

Gameplay

You start by creating a character and arriving in Los Santos. From there you choose what to do. Jobs include races, deathmatches, missions for contacts and team modes. Money buys homes, cars, weapons and clothes.

Heists arrived on 10 March 2015 in the Heists update. They are multi-part jobs that a group of players plans and carries out together. Later updates added businesses that make money over time, such as nightclubs, bunkers, hangars and auto shops. Running and defending these became a large part of the game.

What are the biggest GTA Online updates?

The Contract brought back GTA V's Franklin Clinton as a character in the online world. Dates are taken from Wikipedia.

What is GTA+?

GTA+ is a paid monthly membership for GTA Online. Rockstar announced it on 29 March 2022, first for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Digital pre-orders of GTA VI include a free month of GTA+, as covered on our GTA 6 Online page. Editions and prices are on GTA 6 price and editions.

Reception

The launch was rough. Players hit connection failures, frozen loading screens and lost characters. Rockstar released patches and gave players GTA$500,000 as compensation. Early reviews also called the missions repetitive and the game short on direction, though they praised its scale. On Metacritic it scored 83 out of 100 on PS3 and 80 on Xbox 360.

Opinion improved over time, and the Heists update was very well received. Take-Two said that by February 2014, 70 percent of GTA V players with an internet connection had played the online mode. It also said in-game purchases were the largest driver of its digital revenue.

Loading times were a long-running complaint. A player made an unofficial fix that cut load times by up to 70 percent. Rockstar added the fix to the game in March 2021 and paid the player a US$10,000 bug bounty.

Will GTA Online continue after GTA 6?

Rockstar calls Grand Theft Auto VI a single-player experience and has not announced an online mode for it. Take-Two has said it plans to keep supporting the current GTA Online after GTA VI launches. We collect those statements, with sources, on our GTA 6 Online page.