Best Ways to Make Money in GTA Online (October 2026)

As of October 21, 2026, making money in GTA Online is a weekly routine rather than a single grind. Rockstar’s Title Update 1.73, released on July 14, 2026 with The Kortz Center Heist, added a weekly completion bonus to a list of older heists and cut what you earn for repeating the same finale in the same week. The best order is now: your first Kortz Center Heist of the week, then the bonus runs of the other heists, then Cayo Perico for repeatable solo cash, with your businesses producing in the background. Until November 4, the Halloween event adds triple pay on Survivals and a GTA$2,000,000 Weekly Challenge bonus.

Every figure below is dated. Where Rockstar published the number, we say so. Where it comes from press or community testing, it is labelled as reported.

What changed in July 2026

Rockstar’s official 1.73 patch notes spell out the new rule: selected Contact Missions and Heists now pay a weekly completion bonus to everyone in the crew if the host has not yet completed that finale in the current weekly period, and pay less if the host repeats it within the same week. The list covers the five original heists, The Diamond Casino Heist, all three Doomsday acts, The Data Leaks finale with Dr. Dre, The Cluckin’ Bell Farm Raid, Oscar Guzman Flies Again and KnoWay Out.

The same notes say Cayo Perico’s primary and secondary target values received “further adjustments”, and that its target appearance rates now refresh on the same weekly cadence. On the Newswire, Rockstar added that the first Primary Target sold after each week’s Kortz Center Heist gets a weekly bonus, and that later runs pay less as the art market saturates. The weekly period resets on Thursdays.

The weekly money plan

These are the payouts reported by Game Rant on July 15, 2026, the day after the update, for the host on Normal. They are community-measured, not published by Rockstar.

Activity	Reported payout after 1.73	First run of the week
The Kortz Center Heist (Primary Target)	about GTA$300,000 to 500,000 on repeats	4x on the first sale
The Diamond Casino Heist (Diamonds, max take)	GTA$2,303,000, down from 3,290,000	1.86x
The Doomsday Heist, Act 3	GTA$1,620,000, down from 1,800,000	1.2x
The Pacific Standard Job	GTA$1,500,000, unchanged	1.5x
The Data Leaks (Dr. Dre finale)	GTA$900,000, down from 1,000,000	1.2x
Oscar Guzman Flies Again	GTA$500,000, unchanged	1.5x
The Cluckin’ Bell Farm Raid	GTA$400,000, down from 500,000	1.5x
The Cayo Perico Heist	see below	no weekly bonus

Rockstar then fixed incorrect payouts on repeated Doomsday acts on July 16, and RockstarINTEL reported that the Doomsday weekly bonus went up by 50% at the same time. The first Doomsday run of the week therefore pays more than the 1.2x shown here.

October 2026: the Halloween bonuses, until November 4

Updated October 21, 2026: Rockstar has not released a new title update since July; its patch notes only add the returning Halloween content on October 1. What changes the money plan this month is the Halloween event, which runs until November 4 according to Rockstar’s Newswire:

Activity	Bonus	Note
Halloween Survivals: Ludendorff Cemetery, Cayo Perico, Alien Survivals	3X GTA$ and RP	6X for GTA+ members
Slasher modes, Halloween Community Race Series, Random Transform Races and Hotring	3X GTA$ and RP	Community Race Series through November 4
Bail Office targets (Standard and Most Wanted), Dispatch Work	2X GTA$ and RP	All October
Jack O’Lanterns, UFO Business Battles	2X GTA$ and RP	4X on Jack O’Lanterns for GTA+
Ghosts Exposed	2X GTA$	4X for GTA+
Five Weekly Challenges	GTA$700,000 in prizes	Plus GTA$2,000,000 if you complete all five

The Weekly Challenges are the best value of the month if you started on October 1: GTA$100,000 for each of the first three, GTA$150,000 for completing all waves of a Survival between October 22 and 28, GTA$250,000 for 10 Survival waves without dying between October 29 and November 4, then the GTA$2,000,000 bonus within 72 hours. Miss a week and the bonus is gone, but the weekly prizes still pay. Ghosts Exposed is also worth a night: GTA BOOM and GTA Boss report a base GTA$250,000 and 5,000 RP for photographing all ten spirits, before the multiplier.

Updated October 22, 2026: for the week of October 22 to 28, GTABase, GTA Boss and Power Up Gaming report GTA$500,000 for completing all three Short Trips with Franklin and Lamar, launched from an Agency, before October 28, with Agency properties still 40% off. GTABase and GTA Boss also list 3X GTA$ and RP on eight player-made Halloween missions. Rockstar’s Halloween article mentions neither. The previous week’s GTA$500,000 bonus on Don’t Fuck With Dre ended on October 21.

The Kortz Center: the first run of every week

The Kortz Center Heist is hosted from the Art Studio, an add-on for a Mansion. That is the expensive part: Mansions start at GTA$11,500,000 and the Art Studio costs GTA$4,700,000. You can, however, join someone else’s crew without owning a Mansion, which Rockstar confirms on the Newswire.

The reward is the first sale. GTABoom’s payout tracking, last updated August 27, 2026, lists the story painting, La Dernière Débauche, at GTA$1,925,000 for its first sale after the reset and GTA$481,250 for additional sales that week. The other paintings it has confirmed sit around GTA$1.27 to 1.37 million on a first sale, depending on the painting and the difficulty. Secondary targets come on top. Game Rant puts a realistic solo first run at around GTA$2,200,000, an estimate that depends on how much you can carry.

Two practical points. Game Rant and GTABoom both report a GTA$100,000 fee for extra runs in the same week. And Rockstar itself suggests the smart move: sell the first painting, then keep later ones to display in your Mansion instead of selling them cheaply. The museum sits in the hills of Pacific Bluffs, and you can find the Kortz Center on our 3D map of GTA 5. Our Mansions guide covers what the property itself does.

Cayo Perico: still the repeatable solo heist

Cayo Perico remains the one big heist you can run alone, back to back, without a weekly penalty, because it simply has no weekly bonus. What it lost is value. Game Rant and several other outlets reported these Primary Target values after 1.73, and the GTA Wiki lists the same figures:

Primary Target	Normal	Hard
Pink Diamond	GTA$910,000	GTA$1,001,000
Bearer Bonds	GTA$616,000	GTA$677,000
Ruby Necklace	GTA$560,000	GTA$616,000
Sinsimito Tequila	GTA$400,000	GTA$440,000

Secondary loot was reported down by about 10%. Repeat runs cost a GTA$100,000 setup fee, and the fence and Pavel take 10% and 2% of the take. The wiki lists the cooldown at 144 real minutes after a solo finale and 48 minutes after a group one. Our full Cayo Perico Heist guide walks through the Kosatka, the scoping and the preps.

Businesses: the background income

Passive businesses matter less than heists per hour, but they pay while you do other things, and Rockstar keeps boosting them in rotation. Three things Rockstar has confirmed make them easier to run as of October 2026:

• A Mansion’s AI Assistant can boost production for 24 hours at any business that has Supplies or Product.
• A Mansion’s Security team reduces raids on your businesses, and combined with a business’s own security upgrade can prevent them.
• The Mansion office’s Master Control Terminal manages your businesses remotely.

Weekly events are where businesses really pay. Throughout September 2026, Rockstar’s Business Rivalries event paid 10X the usual Weekly Challenge prize: an extra GTA$1,000,000 each week for tasks such as selling GTA$1,000,000 of Special Cargo, up to GTA$4,000,000 over the month. In October, the Halloween event boosts the Bail Office instead, with 2X GTA$ and RP on Standard and Most Wanted targets all month, and GTA+ members get free Acid Lab Supplies. Check our weekly update guide every Thursday for what is boosted.

GTA+ money

GTA+ deposits GTA$500,000 into your Maze Bank account each billing cycle, according to Rockstar. From October 8 to November 4, 2026, members also earn 6X GTA$ and RP on Halloween Survivals, 4X on Jack O’Lanterns and 4X GTA$ on Ghosts Exposed, and get free Acid Lab Supplies with a free MTL Brickade 6x6. Whether that is worth the fee is covered in our GTA+ guide.

Solo or group?

The weekly bonus is tied to the host. Rockstar’s wording is that it pays all players if the host has not completed that finale this week. A regular crew can therefore take turns hosting the same heist, and each member’s first hosted run pays the bonus to everyone.

Groups also unlock more loot. In Cayo Perico, the gold and paintings inside El Rubio’s compound sit behind doors that need two keycards at once, so solo runs are mostly limited to the cash and drug lockups outside. In the Kortz Center, Rockstar says a team can reach a Secondary Target room that solo players cannot, and more duffel bags raise the maximum take. The trade-off is the split: in Cayo Perico each crew member’s cut is at least 15%.

What not to do

Money glitches, modded “money lobbies” and recovery services are not a strategy. Rockstar’s Community Guidelines define cheating as gaining an advantage through “cheats, exploits, hacks, or other third-party software”, and its suspension policy says a suspension may reset your characters, progress, property and inventory, while a ban is permanent. Nothing in this guide relies on either.