The best game like GTA is Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar’s own open-world outlaw story, followed by Cyberpunk 2077 and Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, the two games from other studios that come closest to a Grand Theft Auto city. The 15 others below cover every itch GTA scratches, from crime stories and cop chases to superpowered sandboxes and a family-friendly pick for younger players.
We ranked these 18 games on how well each one delivers what people love about GTA: a big city or world to roam, vehicles to take, crime and its consequences, and the freedom to make your own fun between missions. Critical reception decides the close calls. We left out Rockstar’s GTA games themselves (our ranking of the best GTA games covers those) and, apart from Red Dead Redemption 2, the rest of Rockstar’s catalog, which our list of the best games to play before GTA 6 covers. Every entry lists the platforms it is on, checked against Steam, the console stores and the publishers’ own pages on October 30, 2026. Every PS4 game here also runs on PS5, and every Xbox One game on Xbox Series X|S, through backward compatibility.
18. LEGO City Undercover
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC (released April 2017); the original came out on Wii U in 2013.
This is the answer to “games like GTA, but for kids.” You play Chase McCain, a police officer who goes undercover to catch the escaped criminal Rex Fury and end his crime wave across LEGO City, a big open city you can explore on foot and in dozens of vehicles you take over along the way. It has the GTA structure (a city map, story missions, hidden collectibles everywhere) with slapstick humor in place of GTA’s gunfights, and the 2017 version adds two-player split-screen, so a parent and child can play it together.
17. Need for Speed Heat
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC (released November 2019).
If your favorite part of GTA is the police chase, Need for Speed Heat is built around it. EA’s tagline is “hustle by day and risk it all at night”: daytime races in Palm City earn the money for your garage, and at night you race illegally for reputation while the police come after you harder the longer you stay out. Getting home with your night’s winnings, with the police on your tail, is as tense as losing a five-star wanted level. The car customization runs deep, too.
16. Schedule I
Platforms: PC (Steam early access since March 2025).
TVGS’s crime sim is the GTA Online business grind turned into a whole game. Its Steam page sums it up: go “from small-time dope pusher to kingpin” in the grungy city of Hyland Point, mixing products, selling to customers, dodging the police, then buying properties and businesses and hiring employees as the empire grows. It supports online co-op with friends. Our Schedule 1 guides hub covers it, including the best customers for dealers and the best Schedule I mods.
15. Mad Max
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC (released September 2015).
Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max is the open-world game for players who spend most of GTA in a car. Max’s Magnum Opus is the real star: you build it up piece by piece across the Wasteland, then use it to ram, harpoon and blow apart enemy convoys. Between the car combat, there is a big desert world full of camps to clear and scrap to collect.
14. Watch Dogs: Legion
Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (released October 2020).
Ubisoft’s near-future London has the biggest twist on the GTA formula here: instead of one lead, you build a resistance by recruiting the people you meet in the street, and each one can become a playable character with their own skills. That makes the city itself the story, as you recruit a construction worker for their cargo drone or a spy for their gadgets. Driving, hacking and drones fill in the rest.
13. Far Cry 6
Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (released October 2021).
Far Cry 6 is a first-person take on GTA’s tropical chaos. On the Caribbean island of Yara, you join a guerrilla revolution against the dictator Antón Castillo, and Ubisoft’s own pitch is to “fight with improvised weapons, travel however you can, and build your rebel network.” That means cars, boats, horses, planes and a lot of explosions across a sun-baked island, and the whole campaign can be played in two-player online co-op.
12. Just Cause 3
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC (released December 2015).
Just Cause 3 is the GTA cheat codes, turned into a whole game. Rico Rodriguez returns to his Mediterranean home of Medici to bring down its dictator, and the island is a playground of more than 1,000 square kilometers, per the Steam page, that you cross with a grappling hook, a parachute and a wingsuit. The best part is chaining them together: grapple a car to a helicopter, wingsuit off a cliff, then blow up an entire military base. Nothing in it is serious, and that is the point.
11. Infamous Second Son
Platforms: PS4 (released March 2014), playable on PS5.
Sucker Punch’s superhero sandbox swaps cars for powers. PlayStation’s page sets it in “a locked-down Seattle,” where Delsin Rowe discovers he can absorb other people’s powers while the Department of Unified Protection hunts down anyone like him. You tear through the city as smoke, neon and more, and your choices push Delsin toward hero or villain, a cleaner version of the moral swings of GTA’s stories.
10. Lost Judgment
Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One (released September 2021) and PC (September 2022).
RGG Studio’s detective thriller trades the yakuza for a private eye. Takayuki Yagami goes undercover to unravel a string of crimes tied to a high school in Yokohama, Japan, splitting time between Yokohama and Tokyo’s Kamurocho. You get three fighting styles, chases, tailing missions and a huge school life of side stories on top, with a skateboard for getting around and a motorbike club among its school stories. If you liked GTA’s mix of crime story and pointless fun, this is that, with better fistfights.
9. Saints Row IV: Re-Elected
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC (the original released August 2013; Re-Elected came to PS4 and Xbox One in 2015 and Switch in 2020).
The Saints go “from the Penthouse to the White House” in Volition’s wildest game: you are President of the United States when aliens invade, and you fight back inside a simulated city with superpowers, super speed and gliding, and a gun that fires dubstep. It is the furthest any game on this list strays from GTA, and it knows it. Metacritic lists an 86 for the PC version, and it is one of the few games like GTA on Switch.
8. Mafia: Definitive Edition
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC (released September 2020).
Hangar 13’s remake of the 2002 original is the best crime story on this list that is not made by Rockstar. Cab driver Tommy Angelo has a run-in with the mob in the 1930s city of Lost Heaven, and the money of the Salieri family proves too big to turn down. It is more focused than GTA, with a story-first structure, but the vintage cars, Prohibition-era streets and its gangster drama make it the closest thing to a GTA set in the 1930s. Mafia II and Mafia III have Definitive Editions too, and our Mafia guides hub covers the newest game, Mafia: The Old Country.
7. Watch Dogs 2
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC (released November 2016).
“Welcome to San Francisco,” says Ubisoft’s store page, and Watch Dogs 2’s Bay Area is one of the best open-world cities of its generation, from Oakland’s docks to Silicon Valley’s tech campuses. As hacker Marcus Holloway and the DedSec crew, you can drive and shoot your way through it like GTA, or hack traffic lights, cars and phones to cause chaos from a distance. Its lighter, funnier tone makes it the most GTA-like Watch Dogs.
6. Saints Row: The Third Remastered
Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (remaster released in 2020, with PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions following in 2021). On Nintendo Switch, the original game is sold as Saints Row: The Third, The Full Package.
This is where Saints Row stopped trying to be GTA and started having fun with it. The Third Street Saints are celebrities, and in the city of Steelport, you take over gangs’ territory with absurd weapons, flying vehicles and a character creator that lets you make anyone. It still plays like a GTA game, with cars, gangs and a notoriety system that works like a wanted level, but the jokes come faster than GTA’s ever did. Xbox Wire said Xbox One owners get the Xbox Series X|S version free, and PlayStation’s store lists a free PS5 upgrade for PS4 owners.
5. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Platforms: PS5 (released October 2023) and PC (January 2025).
Insomniac’s New York is the best open-world city of the last few years, and web-swinging across it is more fun than any car in GTA. Peter Parker and Miles Morales share the story, and you switch between them in the open world, a lot like GTA V’s character switching, as they fight the symbiote and a who’s who of villains across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It is a superhero story rather than a crime one, but the sense of a living city to roam is the same. Our guide to how long Spider-Man 2 is has the hours, and our Marvel guides hub covers the rest.
4. Yakuza 0
Platforms: PS4 (released January 2017 in the West), PC (2018) and Xbox One (2020). Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut came to Nintendo Switch 2 in June 2025, and to PC and Xbox Series X|S in December 2025.
Yakuza 0 is the best entry point to SEGA’s crime series, and the most GTA-like in spirit. SEGA calls it a front-row seat “to 1980s life in Japan” as junior yakuza Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima fight their way through Tokyo and Osaka. The cities are small next to Los Santos, but every block is packed: brawling, karaoke, arcades, and side businesses where Kiryu runs a real estate empire and Majima a cabaret club. Its story is as dramatic as anything in GTA. Metacritic lists an 86 for the PC version.
3. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC and Mac (released October 2014; the original came out in 2012).
No game outside Rockstar has made a better GTA than Sleeping Dogs. You play Wei Shen, an undercover cop working his way into a Hong Kong triad, and the city is a dense, neon-soaked open world of street markets, karaoke bars and night races. It has the full GTA kit, cars, boats, gunfights and a wanted system, plus two things GTA never had: brutal martial arts combat and “action hijacks,” where you leap from your car onto another at full speed. The Definitive Edition includes all the original’s downloadable content.
2. Cyberpunk 2077
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Mac, plus Nintendo Switch 2 (Ultimate Edition, June 2025). It first released in December 2020.
CD Projekt Red’s Night City is the most detailed open-world city since Los Santos, a “dangerous megalopolis obsessed with power, glamor, and ceaseless body modification,” as its store page puts it. It plays as a first-person RPG, but the GTA DNA is everywhere: you steal cars, take gigs from fixers, cause chaos and get the police on your tail, with car combat and police chases added in its big 2.0 update. Its Phantom Liberty expansion and years of free updates turned its reputation around, and our Cyberpunk guides hub covers it, from the best Cyberpunk mods to installing mods on PS5 and Xbox and the dual wield build.
1. Red Dead Redemption 2
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One (released October 2018) and PC (November 2019); the PS4 and Xbox One versions run on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The best game like GTA is Rockstar’s other open world. Red Dead Redemption 2 has everything you know from GTA, robberies, gunfights, a bounty system that works like a wanted level and a world full of strangers and side activities, set in 1899 as Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang run from the law. Horses take the place of cars, and stagecoaches, trains and banks take the place of armored trucks. It is slower and more detailed than any GTA, and Metacritic lists a 93 for the PC version.
Red Dead Online, its online world, comes with it, like GTA Online with GTA V. Our Red Dead Redemption hub covers it all, including how to get rid of your bounty, how to make money fast and the best RDR2 mods.
Games Like GTA by Platform
- PS5: Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Saints Row: The Third Remastered, Lost Judgment, Far Cry 6 and Watch Dogs: Legion have PS5 versions, and every PS4 game above runs on PS5 too.
- Xbox: Cyberpunk 2077, Saints Row: The Third Remastered, Lost Judgment, Far Cry 6, Watch Dogs: Legion and Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut have Xbox Series X|S versions, and every Xbox One game above runs on Xbox Series X|S.
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 2: Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, Saints Row: The Third, The Full Package and LEGO City Undercover are on Switch, and Cyberpunk 2077 and Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut are on Switch 2. Rockstar’s own Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire and GTA: The Trilogy, The Definitive Edition are on Switch, too.
- PC: every game on this list except Infamous Second Son.
Waiting for the real thing? Grand Theft Auto VI arrives on November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and our GTA guides hub has everything we know, from what city it is based on to how big the map is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the closest game to GTA? Red Dead Redemption 2 is the closest, since Rockstar made it with the same open-world approach as GTA. From other studios, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition plays the most like a GTA game, with a Hong Kong open world, car chases and a crime story.
What are the best games like GTA on PS5? Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 are the best with native PS5 versions. Red Dead Redemption 2 and Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition are PS4 games that run on PS5 through backward compatibility.
Are there games like GTA on Switch? Yes. On the original Switch, Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, Saints Row: The Third, The Full Package and LEGO City Undercover are the best picks, and Rockstar’s own GTA: The Trilogy, The Definitive Edition is there too. Switch 2 adds Cyberpunk 2077 and Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut.
What is a game like GTA for kids? LEGO City Undercover. It has GTA’s open city, vehicles and story missions, but you play a police officer chasing criminals, with slapstick humor instead of guns and gore, and two-player split-screen in the 2017 version.
Is there a game like GTA 6 out now? GTA 6 itself arrives on November 19, 2026. Until then, Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar’s latest all-new game, and for GTA 6’s Miami-style setting, the original GTA Vice City is the closest, with Need for Speed Heat’s palm-lined Palm City for night drives. Our list of the best games to play before GTA 6 has more.
Is Saints Row like GTA? Yes, especially Saints Row: The Third Remastered, which has cars, gangs, territory and a wanted system like GTA, but far sillier. Saints Row IV: Re-Elected goes further, adding superpowers and an alien invasion.