GTA Online Businesses Guide

GTA Online Businesses Guide

Latest posts by Syed Arham (see all)

If you play Grand Theft Auto online, you should know that making money is one of the main obstacles any aspiring billionaire must tackle. In that sense, the most straightforward way of earning money, particularly in GTA Online, is simply by starting a business, and Rockstar provides many ideas.

As such, in this GTA Online businesses guide, I will be going over all the different GTA Online businesses and how much money you can make off each of them.

Passive Businesses

As the name suggests, passive businesses are the ones that will earn you money even when you are busy doing something else. There are, however, a variety of different passive businesses, and they are as follows:

MC Businesses

Weed Farm
Weed Farm GTA Online Business. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

The MC businesses that are all less than legal in GTA online are:

  • Counterfeit cash
  • Document forgery
  • Weed farms
  • Methamphetamine labs
  • Cocaine lockups

To set up any passive businesses, you will need to get yourself an MC clubhouse. Start by pulling out your phone and going into the internet. Here you need to go to ‘Money and Services’ and click on ‘maze-bank foreclosures.’ Once the map opens up, you can access all the clubhouses by clicking on the icon that says clubhouses in the top right corner.

Setting Up

Next comes the question of the location of your clubhouse. I suggest getting the cheapest one possible because you won’t be using this clubhouse very often. Once you are a proud owner of your first clubhouse, go to the location and open up the laptop inside the premises.

This will give you access to all the mentioned businesses that are available at that time. The general idea about which one to buy is the same as your MC clubhouse; just buy the cheapest one possible for whichever type of business you want to set up, and you are good to go.

Profit Potential

The scope of profit is probably the most crucial factor you need to consider before choosing which MC business you should open. But before I move on to the amount of money each type of business can make, I would like to touch on the things you can do to increase these incomes.

Whichever business you choose, if you intend on playing GTA online for a long time, I highly recommend buying the staff and equipment upgrades as these will double the money you can make from each type of business.

Now, without further adieu, here are the money you can make with and without the upgrades and how much time it will take you to break even:

MC Business Least Possible

 

Initial Investment

Hourly Profit

 

(not upgraded)

Full Upgrade Investment Hourly Profit

 

(upgraded)

Time to break even

 

(upgraded)

Document Forgery $650,000 $16,000 $745,000 $38,000 36 hours
Weed Farm $715,000 $20,000 $1,250,000 $41,000 47 hours
Counterfeit Cash $845,000 $22,000 $1,150,000 $48,000 41 hours
Methamphetamine Lab $910,000 $21,000 $1,430,000 $51,000 45 hours
Cocaine Lockup $975,000 $30,000 $1,300,000 $74,000 31 hours

Internal Workings

As soon as you enter one of your businesses, you will notice a Supplies and a Product bar in the bottom right corner. The concept behind these is quite simple: as long as you are logged into GTA online, your Supplies bar will deplete, and your Product bar will increase. You will need to keep this bar filled to be able to keep manufacturing products to sell.

  • Acquiring Supplies

There are two ways to keep your Supplies bar filled; you can either buy supplies or steal them. One bar of supplies will cost you 15,000 dollars; if your Supplies bar is empty, you will be set back 75,000 dollars to fill your supplies fully.

On the other hand, stealing supplies will not cost you any money, but you will have to spend some time stealing supplies in the game. The question arises, is it worth spending time stealing supplies, or is it better to just buy them at once?

The answer will depend on whether or not you have all the staff and equipment upgrades. If you have all the upgrades, just buying the supplies and saving time to do a heist or mission will earn you much more money. Conversely, not having the upgrades will mean stealing your best bet in money-making.

Methamphetamine Lab
Methamphetamine Lab GTA Online Business. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki
  • Delivering Products

As your products bar fills up, it will spawn a delivery vehicle for every quarter it fills up after the first bar. In other words, if your product bar is filled, it will spawn four different delivery vehicles.

Now, if you are flying solo on GTA online, delivering the products as soon as the first vehicle spawns is the best strategy. This is because these kinds of missions come with a 15-20 min timer, and it becomes increasingly challenging to cross the entire map multiple times in that period.

If, however, you have your friends with you to help, delivering multiple products at once is not much of an issue.

Bunker

GTA Bunker
Bunker. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

Next on my list of passive businesses in GTA online is the bunker. A bunker is just an amped-up MC business, but unlike MC businesses, you can only buy one type of bunker.

Setting Up

Upon viewing all the available bunkers on the map from the ‘maze-bank foreclosures’ page, you will see that none of them are in the city. Location is an essential factor you need to consider when looking for the perfect bunker. I recommend getting a bunker that is closest to the city as most of your deliveries will end in the city, so this will save time.

Once inside your bunker, you will need to do a small setup mission to start your operations. You will notice three bars at the bottom right of your screen saying Stock, Research, and Supplies. These bars will serve the same purpose as they did in MC businesses, apart from the Research bar.

Profit Potential

When you start your business, it will make you 40,000 dollars an hour. However, like with MC businesses, you can upgrade the staff and equipment to earn more from your bunker. 

The staff upgrades will cost you 598,500 dollars and increase your hourly income to 54,000. Following the staff upgrades, you will need to focus on the equipment upgrades, which will set you back 1,155,000 dollars.

Having just the equipment upgrade will increase your income to 55,000 dollars per hour. Fully upgrading the staff and equipment will result in a 79,000 hourly income. Needless to say, this makes the bunker a lot better than any MC business.

GTAO Bunker
GTAO Bunker. Image Source: GTA Wiki Fandom

Internal Workings

The bunker essentially follows the same concept as the MC business. When you are logged into GTA online, your Supplies bar will deplete, and your Stock bar will keep increasing. Your job is to sell the product when the time is right and buy supplies so your staff can keep making more products.

  • Acquiring Supplies

The game offers two ways to refill your supplies bar: stealing or buying them. Now here is where the staff and equipment upgrades will play their part. It takes 75,000 dollars to resupply your bunker fully. So if you have one or none of the staff upgrades, it is always better to steal supplies.

If you have both the staff and equipment upgrades and are playing solo, it is better just to buy the supplies. You can earn a lot more in the time it will take you to steal the supplies as it will take about five steal missions to fill your supplies.

However, stealing the supplies is probably your best option if you are playing with your friends, as it won’t take you and your friends much time to complete all the required tasks.

  • Delivering Products

Before partaking in product deliveries, you must activate Sell Missions which task you with delivering the required stock in the first place. Sell Missions become available whenever a new delivery vehicle is spawned, which occurs every time your Stock bar fills up by another 20 percent. Therefore, if your stock bar is complete, you will have five different vehicles to do your deliveries.

Now, if you are playing alone, the best strategy would be to deliver the products as soon as the first vehicle is spawned. Similarly, if you are a two-person party, you can let the stock bar fill about 40 percent so that two delivery vehicles are spawned and split up the work.

Nightclub

Nightclubs GTAO
GTAO Nightclub. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

The Nightclub is usually the last option players go for because it depends on already owning other businesses. As such, this is not something a new player should be looking to do anytime soon.

Setting Up

Make your way to the ‘maze-bank foreclosures’ page, which will show you all the businesses in the game. To filter out all the nightclubs, you can click on the button saying Nightclub in the top right. I recommend getting one as far north of the city as possible from all the nightclubs as this will help in selling the mission.

Internal Workings

While you can earn money from the Nightclub, you will have to go through multiple boring missions to increase your popularity. Even after you have done all these missions, it just won’t make you much money.

The best way to earn money from the Nightclub is from Warehouse Management. Here you will see five different technicians available; one will be unlocked by default, and the rest you will have to buy for 100,000 dollars each.

How these technicians work is you choose an industry, and the technician will get your products from that business. Here comes the part where you will have to own other businesses in the game to make money from the Nightclub.

You can assign each technician to get you different products from different industries. These industries will only be unlocked if you own them already. Here is a list of all the businesses and what they correspond to for the technicians:

  • Cargo and shipments require a hangar or crate warehouse
  • Sporting goods need a bunker
  • South American imports require a cocaine lockup
  • Pharmaceutical research requires a meth lab
  • Organic produce requires a weed farm
  • Printing and copying require document forgery business
  • Cash creation requires counterfeit cash business

If you already own these businesses, things become a lot simpler. All you need to do is assign a technician to a business, and they will get you the product while you are busy on another mission. Once you have enough products in your warehouse, you can sell them and make money.

Nightclubs GTAO Setup
GTAO Nightclub. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

Profit Potential

Before you dive into which products you should be getting, here is a list of the prices of how much money each business will be able to produce hourly:

Business Profit
Cargo & Shipments $8,570
Sporting Goods $7,500
South American Imports $10,000
Pharmaceutical Research $8,500
Organic Product $4,500
Printing and Copying $4,000
Cash Creation $7,000

Active Businesses

These are businesses you will have to work on to earn any money – in other words; you don’t get any money when you’re not working on them. Active businesses are usually centered around sourcing some product, stacking it up in a warehouse, and eventually selling it off for profit.

Warehouses

Warehouses GTAO
GTAO Warehouse. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

Before you can buy a warehouse, you will need a CEO’s office. To set one up, take out your phone, and go into ‘Money and Services’. From there, you can access the ‘dynasty8executiverealty’, which will show you the location of the four CEO offices in GTA online.

The location of the CEO’s office will not matter, so you can just buy the cheapest one to save money. After you have a CEO office, you need to set yourself as the CEO. This can be accomplished by accessing your interaction menu, going in ‘SecuroServ,’ and registering as a CEO.

After this, you can access your laptop and be greeted with special cargo, vehicle cargo, and special vehicle work. For the sake of making money, we will focus on the first two as the special cargo work is not an excellent option for earning some cash.

Crate warehouses

Crate warehouse
GTAO Crate Warehouse. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

Once you click on the crate cargo option on your laptop, you will be shown a bunch of different warehouses on the map. You can select from three different sizes of small, medium, and large warehouses, which vary in the capacity they can hold.

Internal Working

The idea behind crate warehouses is pretty straightforward but might not be as easy to implement. You will start by finding out the location of the crates. To do so, access your laptop, and you will see three options with different prices and a different number of crates.

Keeping money with respect to time in mind, getting three crates at once for 18,000 dollars is most beneficial. The next bit is, of course, stealing the crates for which you know the location. Steal missions are generally of two types: either you will have to steal a truck with the crates inside, or you will have to get the crates individually. Which one you will get is entirely up to luck, but having to steal a single truck with the crates inside is much better than stealing three different crates.

After one sell mission, you will have to wait four minutes before you can go again. Consequently, if you want to grind money, it is best to have multiple warehouses.z

Profit Potential

You need to consider a few things before deciding when to sell your crates from your warehouse. To begin, as we have discussed before, if you are playing alone, it is best if you do not have more than one delivery vehicle, as multiple vehicles just become difficult to sell.

If you have up to nine crates, you will have one delivery vehicle spawned. If your crate count is between 10 and 27, two vehicles and anything above 27 will have spawned three different delivery vehicles.

The best way to make money from these warehouses is to buy five different warehouses and fill them up to the desired number of vehicles. Here you will have to show a bit of patience and wait for the double money event that happens once every one or two months. During the event, you can sell your crates for double the money. This will substantially increase your overall profit and make earning money in the game much easier.

Vehicle Warehouse

Vehicle Warehouse
GTAO Vehicle Warehouse. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

The vehicle warehouse is probably the most efficient way to make money in GTA Online. Once set up correctly, this warehouse can fetch 80,000 dollars an hour.

Click on vehicle cargo from your laptop to start setting up your vehicle warehouse. This will show you all the vehicle warehouses on the map, and we recommend just choosing the cheapest one.

Internal Working

Once you are ready to start earning some money, go into your CEO’s office, log into your laptop, and click ‘Source Vehicle.’ This will show you the location of the vehicle you are going to be stealing.

From there on, it is pretty simple, just go to the vehicle location, steal the vehicle, modify it and sell it at a higher price to a dealer. And you don’t need to care about the modification much; just do whatever you like, and the car is ready to sell.

Profit Potential

Now that you understand what you will do in the vehicle warehouse, let’s look at the best way to earn the most money. To start, the game consists of 10 standard, 10 mid-range, and 12 top-range vehicles. Every time you click ‘Source Vehicle,’ the game will give you a random vehicle.

It is evident that the top-range vehicle will sell for more money than the others. So, here is where you can abuse the game’s mechanics a bit, as the game will not give you a duplicate vehicle if you already have it in your warehouse.

Therefore, the easiest way to always get a top-range vehicle is not to sell any standard or mid-range vehicles you get when you start your business. Once you have all the standard and mid-range vehicles in the game, you will always get top-range vehicles to steal. Each of these vehicles can be sold for up to 80,000 dollars!

Hangar

GTAO Hangar
GTAO Hangar. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

The hangar operates in a pretty similar way as the cargo warehouse but with air vehicles.

Setting Up

To set up your hangar, go into ‘Money and Services’ on your phone and click on ‘mazebank foreclosures.’ This will show you all the warehouses available on the map, and to look at only the hangar, you will have to click on the button “Hangar” at the top-right corner.

We recommend getting a hangar at Fort Zancudo because they are in a better location for steal missions, and it comes will the added benefit of no wanted level when you go to Fort Zancudo.

Internal Working

Apart from being the only way you can own air vehicles in the game, the hangar can be used for stealing and selling cargo to earn more money. The different categories of goods can be piled together as the ones that give you a bonus when you have them together.

The bonuses on these crates are as follows:

  •  You get a five percent bonus on every five crates of ‘Tobacco and Alcohol’ and ‘Counterfeit Goods’
  • A 12 percent bonus on every ten crates of ‘Animal Materials,’ ‘Art and Antiques, and ‘Jewelry and Gemstones’
  • And lastly, a 35 percent bonus on every 25 crates of ‘Narcotics,’ ‘Chemicals,’ and ‘Medical Supplies

Profit Potential

When to sell your goods will depend on how many friends you have when playing, as having more crates will spawn more vehicles. This will make the crates challenging to deliver. If you have up to 10 crates in your hangar, you will have one delivery vehicle spawned. There will be two delivery vehicles for 11 to 25 crates.

For more than 26 crates, you will have three delivery vehicles which will be extremely difficult to deliver if you play alone.

Auto shop

Auto shop
GTAO Auto shop. Image Source: GTA Fandom Wiki

The last active business is the auto shop which can be used for multiple things in the game.

Setting Up

Like most other properties, go to ‘Money and Services’ on your phone and access’ maze bank foreclosures.’ After filtering out Autoshop from the top right corner, you can view all the Auto shops on the map.

None of these are in a terrible location, so you can just pick whichever one is the cheapest. When buying the Auto shop, you will be given the option to get a second staff member and an extra car lift. We recommend getting both of these things if you wish to use your Auto shop for customer car modifications.

Profit Potential

  • Forklift

Occasionally, customers will bring their car to your Auto shop for some upgrades. It will be your job to modify the car according to the customer’s needs and then deliver the vehicle back to the customer.

The modification of the car will usually cost about 35,000 dollars, and you can get about 60,000 dollars on delivery. You can also upgrade your staff so that the staff will deliver the vehicle for you, but the staff will crash in most cases, resulting in less profit.

  • Mini Heists

A more efficient way to earn money from the Auto shop is by using it to start mini heists. These will not give you the same money as a regular heist but will pay more than a regular contact job.

For every mini heist, you must do two setup missions and one finale. Each mini heist will take 25 to 45 minutes, depending on how quickly you do them. They can be done solo or with a party of up to four. These heists can get anywhere from 190,000 to 300,000 dollars per mini heist.

  • Exotic Exports List

The last thing that you can do to make money from the Auto shop is a list of exotic vehicles written on a blackboard in your Auto shop. If you see any of these vehicles in your free roam of the game, you can steal them and deliver them to the dock for 20,000 dollars each.

FAQs

Question: What is the best way to make passive money in GTA Online?

Answer: If you are an experienced player, the Nightclub is the best way to earn millions within a shorter time. However, new players should stick to the hangar as their primary source of passive income.

Question: Will assigning all my staff in the bunker to research new weapons fill the bar faster?

Answer: Yes, by assigning all your staff to research, the bar will fill up much quicker. However, keep in mind that this means that there will be no product being produced, and you will not be able to make any money from your bunker.

Question: Can a player take a loan in GTA Online?

Answer: Yes, players can go for a loan from maze bank ranging from 50,000 to 10,000,000 and decide how long they keep the loan. However, the longer you choose to keep the loan, the higher the loan’s interest rate.

Conclusion

Not all businesses are the best choices for solo players or beginners. Businesses, like a nightclub which needs other properties owned or MC businesses, are generally something you can lay off till you have a little experience in the game and money in your wallet.

The business to go for is the vehicle warehouse which can get you 80,000 dollars per car sale once you have set it up. Following that is the bunker, which allows for a passive income of over 1,000,000 dollars every 12 hours and allows you to unlock new weapons in the game.

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