The Five Heists and Their Approaches

Heists are what Grand Theft Auto V was built around. Each one is a multi-stage operation: you scout the target, choose how to hit it, recruit a crew, complete setup missions and only then pull off the job itself. The choices you make along the way change how the heist plays out and how much money each protagonist walks away with. There are five big heists in the story, and four of them ask you to pick an approach.

How a Heist Comes Together

Every heist follows the same structure, and understanding it makes each decision easier.

1. Scout the target A casing mission lets you look around and identify weak points.
2. Choose an approach On the planning board, you decide how the job will be done.
3. Pick the crew Hire gunmen, drivers and hackers, each taking a cut of the take.
4. Complete the setups Steal vehicles, gear and disguises the plan depends on.
5. Run the job Switch between characters as the heist unfolds.

Lester Crest is the mastermind behind most of these jobs. His planning board is where you see the options, the crew members available and the setup tasks still to do. Approaches are not just cosmetic; they lead to different missions, different set pieces and sometimes different payouts.

Picking Your Crew

Crew members fall into three roles: gunmen, drivers and hackers. Each one takes a percentage of the final take, and the better the crew member, the bigger the cut. For example, top-tier crew in The Big Score take around 14 to 15 percent, while lower-cut hires take as little as 4 to 8 percent.

Lower-cut crew come with risks. An inexperienced driver might crash and lose part of the loot, a weak gunman might drop some of what he is carrying, and a low-skill hacker gives you less time on a security window. The good news is that crew members gain experience every time they survive a heist. A lower-cut hire who has been on a few jobs can perform almost as well as a top-tier one, without the big cut.

The Jewel Store Job

The first heist sends Michael and Franklin after a Vangelico jewelry store in Rockford Hills. After casing the store, you choose between two approaches. The Loud approach means storming in with weapons and grabbing what you can before the police arrive. The Smart approach uses knockout gas pumped through the ventilation system so the staff and customers pass out while the crew works. Smart requires more setup but makes the job itself smoother.

The Merryweather Heist

This job targets a shipment belonging to Merryweather, the private military contractor that appears throughout the story. You can approach it Offshore, by going after the cargo where it is held at sea, or by hitting the Freighter carrying it. The two options lead to quite different missions, one focused on underwater work and the other on a more direct assault.

The Paleto Score

The Paleto Score is the one heist without a choice of approach. Michael, Trevor and a gunman hit a bank in the small northern town of Paleto Bay. What starts as a robbery turns into one of the game’s most memorable shootouts, as the crew fights its way through the town in heavy armor against a massive police and military response. It is a pure action set piece and a favorite for many players.

The Bureau Raid

The Bureau Raid sends the crew into a government building to steal sensitive information. The Fire Crew approach has your team posing as firefighters responding to an emergency. The Roof Entry approach drops them in from above by helicopter. Both include tense moments inside the building and require careful use of character switching.

The Big Score

The final heist is the biggest of all: a raid on the Union Depository’s gold. The Subtle approach is more complex and needs a larger crew, including a hacker, plus extra setup spending. The Obvious approach is louder and more direct. Players often point out that the Obvious approach can deliver the larger take, while Subtle feels more like a classic heist movie. Either way, this is where the three protagonists earn the money that defines their post-story lives.

Approaches Compared

Why Players Want More Heists

If there is one complaint players repeat about Grand Theft Auto V, it is that there are only five big heists. Each is so well designed that fans wish there had been more, and a single-player expansion was widely expected. It never arrived, and later heist content went into GTA Online instead. That is part of why the story heists are still talked about so much: they are rare, and every one counts.

The heists are best experienced firsthand, with all the switching, planning and improvising they involve. Start with GTA 5 in browser on our home page and work your way toward the Union Depository.