GTA 5 Heists: The Gold Medal Guide for Every Job and Approach

Story mode in GTA 5 has five heists, and each one hides a Gold Medal behind a list of extra conditions the base mission never asks for. Miss the medal and you still finish the job and get paid - but you leave 100% completion, and the achievement tied to it, on the table.

The essentials:

• GTA 5's story has five heists: The Jewel Store Job, The Merryweather Heist, The Paleto Score, The Bureau Raid and The Big Score.
• Four of the five heists offer two approaches (Smart/Loud, Freighter/Offshore, Fire Crew/Roof Entry, Subtle/Obvious); the Paleto Score has a single plan. Outside the Jewel Store Job, each approach carries its own Gold Medal objectives.
• Objectives fall into four buckets: a time limit, a headshot count, a minimum accuracy percentage, and one or two mission-specific bonus tasks.
• You do not need to nail every objective in a single run - once you clear one, the game remembers it across replays of the same mission and approach.
• The setup missions that lead into each heist have their own Gold Medals too, and clearing them first makes the finale much less stressful.

How Gold Medals Actually Work

After every story mission, GTA 5 shows a Bronze, Silver or Gold rating based on a checklist of objectives specific to that mission. Reaching Gold on a heist finale (and its setups) counts toward the game's 100% Completion checklist, alongside collectibles, side content and story progress - see our GTA 5 100% Completion Checklist for the full picture of everything else that's tracked.

The one thing most players miss: individual objectives are saved once you hit them, even if the overall run fails or falls short of Gold elsewhere. If you nail the headshot count on one attempt but blow the time limit, replay the mission from the pause menu (Story > Replay Mission) and focus only on the objective you're missing. You can build a Gold Medal run across several attempts instead of chasing a perfect single playthrough.

A few habits make every heist easier to grind:

• Skip cutscenes and dialogue with the button prompt shown on screen - time limits start the moment the mission loads, not when the action starts.
• Pick your crew based on skill level, not cut percentage. A cheaper crew member with a low stat can blow a stealth approach or tank your accuracy score; the extra cash from a smaller cut isn't worth losing the medal.
• Warm up on the shooting range or with a few free-roam gunfights before any heist that needs a high accuracy percentage - misses early in a mission are hard to recover from.

Crew, Cut and Approach: How the Heists Work

Every heist follows the same loop: Lester plans the job, you clear the setup missions that gather the gear, you hire a crew for the roles the plan needs, then you run the finale. Three choices shape both the payout and the medal:

• Approach. Four of the five heists let you choose between two plans, and the choice changes the setups, the finale and the Gold Medal objectives. The Paleto Score is the exception, with a single plan.
• Crew. Gunmen, drivers and hackers each come with a skill level and a cut. Better crew members take a bigger percentage but survive longer and perform better. A crew member who survives a successful heist comes back about 25% more skilled at the same price, while one who dies is gone for every heist that follows.
• Cut. The crew is paid first and the rest is split between the protagonists, so the size of the crew matters as much as its price. It is why the Obvious approach to The Big Score leaves each protagonist more than the Subtle one.

That makes hiring a campaign-long decision: a gunman you burn in the Paleto Score is a gunman you cannot hire for The Big Score.

The Jewel Store Job

The opening heist offers a Smart approach (chloroform gas, sedated staff, no gunfire) and a Loud approach (smash the windows and grab what you can before the police show up). Smart is the easier route for a clean Gold Medal since there's no combat to manage.

The Gold Medal objectives are the same on both approaches: grab the jewelry within 50 seconds, loot all 20 display cabinets rather than just the fastest ones, and keep Franklin safe during the getaway chase through the Los Santos River channel. The setup mission, Casing the Jewel Store, has its own medal: finish within eight minutes and capture all three security features in a single photo. For the job itself, step by step, see The GTA 5 Jewel Store Job Heist, Explained.

The Merryweather Heist

This one splits into a Freighter approach and an Offshore approach, and they have almost nothing in common. On the Freighter, Michael boards the ship and plants sticky bombs while Franklin picks off guards with a sniper rifle; once the ship goes down, Michael dives into the wreck for the device and Trevor collects it in a submersible. Offshore, Michael flies a Cargobob carrying the sub, Trevor pilots it to find the device with the Trackify app, and Franklin holds off Merryweather with a machine gun.

The Freighter medal rewards stealth: 12 headshots, at least 80% accuracy, 12 stealth kills, reaching the ship's interior without raising the alarm, and finding the container within 60 seconds. Go in with a suppressed weapon and take the stealth kills whenever the game offers them instead of shooting on sight. The Offshore medal is about speed and the chase instead: find the container within two minutes, finish within 14:30, take out every Merryweather pursuer and shake them off in under four minutes.

The Paleto Score

The Paleto Score is the one heist with no approach to choose. Michael, Franklin, Trevor and a hired gunman walk into the Blaine County Savings Bank in Paleto Bay in heavy armor, then fight their way down the main street against the police and, eventually, the army. The only setup, Military Hardware, gets you the gear. The Gold Medal asks for four things: fire over 4,000 bullets, keep at least 50% accuracy, finish within 16 minutes, and cause $1,000,000 of damage around Paleto Bay. Keep firing at pursuing vehicles rather than just outrunning them: the bullet count and the damage total both climb fast that way.

The crew choice matters more here than the medal. The payout is modest next to the other heists, and a gunman who dies here is gone for the Bureau Raid and The Big Score, so think about who you are willing to risk.

The Bureau Raid

The Bureau Raid has arguably the widest gap between its two approaches. Fire Crew has the team pose as firefighters to get into the building, while Roof Entry drops them in by helicopter for a louder fight.

Roof Entry is the medal that leans on combat: 20 headshots, at least 70% accuracy, no innocent civilians killed, landing on the main section of the roof, hacking the system within 45 seconds, and finishing within 19 minutes. Stick to federal agents and avoid free-firing into rooms you haven't cleared visually. Fire Crew trades all of that for timing objectives: finish within 18 minutes, clear the mopping section within three minutes, abseil down the elevator shaft within 30 seconds, and escape with at least 40% oxygen left. It is the more forgiving choice for players who struggle with the gunfight.

The Big Score

The finale offers a Subtle approach and an Obvious approach, and both gross the same $201.6 million. Subtle takes four setups (a police transporter fitted with spike strips, then three Gauntlets to modify at Los Santos Customs) and, at the very end, a decision to bribe Casey with one gold bar. Obvious takes three: an HVY Cutter, a freight train lifted with a Skylift, and a getaway car parked near the Union Depository. Obvious also needs a smaller crew, with no hacker, which is why it leaves each protagonist about $41.7 million against about $35.6 million for Subtle.

The medals differ too. Both ask for 20 headshots and at least 60% accuracy. Subtle adds Signal Man, fewer than 10 traffic-light changes with retries counted, and has no time limit. Obvious adds a 16-minute limit and Cha-Ching: dropping the gold onto the moving train within 30 seconds, from the helicopters carrying it. Practicing the gold drop on a first run is worth it, since missing that window alone can cost the medal even if every other objective is clean.

Whichever approach you take on the finale, remember which protagonist you end up controlling matters for the epilogue and which of GTA 5's three endings become available - it's worth deciding on your ending before you commit to a Big Score approach.

Mistakes That Cost You Money

1. Burning your best crew early. A crew member who dies on a job is gone for good. Spread the risk and keep your best people for the Bureau Raid and The Big Score.
2. Rushing the setups. The gear you collect in setup missions decides how hard the finale is, and the setups carry medals of their own (see below).
3. Hiring on price alone. A cheaper crew member takes a smaller cut but fails more often, and a failure costs more than the saving.
4. Chasing every medal on the first run. Medals only matter for 100% completion. Play the story first, then replay with a plan, using the objective tracking described above.

Setups Matter Too

Every heist finale is preceded by two or three setup missions, and Rockstar gave most of them their own Gold Medal conditions - usually a time limit and an accuracy or stealth requirement, sometimes tied to a vehicle chase or a specific kill count. Treat them as practice runs for the finale's demands: a setup that asks for 70% accuracy is training you for the finale's combat, and a setup built around stealth is training you for the finale's detection rules. Clearing setups on Gold first, before attempting the finale, is the single best way to avoid discovering a hard requirement mid-heist with no way to recover.

If you're chasing every checklist item GTA 5 has to offer beyond the heists, our guides on Michael, Franklin and Trevor's special abilities, the full Strangers and Freaks roster, and how to reach North Yankton cover the rest of what feeds into 100% completion. And if you're curious whether GTA 6 will bring heists back in a similar form, we've broken down how GTA 6 heists could work based on everything shown in the trailers so far.