Weapons: the complete guide to arming up in GTA Online

GTA Online has well over a hundred weapons and you need about ten of them. The rest are flavour, nostalgia or traps for new money. This guide is the efficient route through the whole arsenal: what to buy in your first week, how the Mk II system actually works, the loadout the community has settled on, and the Gun Van exclusives that never reach the shops.

Everything here is checked against the current game and tracked community consensus as of early August 2026, and prices are printed only where verified.

Step 1: build the starter kit

• The AP Pistol first: fully automatic, suppressor-ready and still the undisputed king of shooting from a car seat a decade on
• A Special Carbine as your rifle: accurate, hard-hitting and the platform you will later upgrade
• An Assault Shotgun for close work: a 32-shell drum on full auto that clears rooms and never really leaves the meta
• Sticky Bombs the moment they unlock at rank 19: thrown, planted, detonated on your terms, and useful in every single activity in the game
• One melee weapon for dignity: the Machete does the job, and the Stone Hatchet from the treasure hunt does it with style

Step 2: unlock the Mk II system

• Mk II upgrades happen at a Weapon Workshop inside a Mobile Operations Center or an Avenger, so the system arrives alongside the Bunker era of your account
• Upgrades are per-weapon: the benchmark example is the Heavy Sniper to Heavy Sniper Mk II at GTA$165,375, and it is the single best weapon purchase in GTA Online
• Bunker research unlocks the special ammunition and attachments that make Mk II weapons what they are, which is half of what that research track is actually for

Step 3: assemble the ten that matter

• AP Pistol: every drive-by, for ever
• Special Carbine Mk II: the all-purpose rifle, accuracy and firepower in balance
• Combat MG Mk II: sustained fire that shreds armoured enemies, the heist workhorse
• Assault Shotgun: the close-quarters answer
• Heavy Sniper Mk II: the gold standard at range, and with the right rounds an anti-aircraft weapon
• Marksman Rifle Mk II: the PvP sniper, trading raw damage for fire rate and mobility
• Tactical SMG: the newer meta pick that replaced the old SMGs, superb on bikes and on the move
• Sticky Bombs: the most useful throwable in the game
• Homing Launcher or the Compact EMP Launcher: one deletes vehicles, the other politely disables them
• Up-n-Atomizer: no ammo, no damage worth naming, and it flips your stuck car upright, which makes it secretly one of the most-used weapons in Los Santos

Step 4: learn the ammo that changes fights

• Explosive rounds on the Heavy Sniper Mk II are the headline: helicopters, jets and armoured vehicles come down in one or two hits from anywhere on the map
• Full Metal Jacket rounds turn the Combat MG Mk II into an armoured-vehicle problem for other people
• Armour-piercing, incendiary and hollow point rounds exist across the Mk II range, each with a job; the habit to build is matching the ammo to the activity, not filling every slot with explosive and hoping

Step 5: check the Gun Van

• The Gun Van roams to a new location daily with a rotating weekly stock and standing discounts, and several of the best weapons in the game live there exclusively
• The Railgun, GTA$730,000: a shoulder-fired argument-ender that deletes most vehicles in a shot or two, usually discounted in the van
• The Tactical SMG at GTA$409,500 and the Up-n-Atomizer at GTA$399,000, both van stock
• The El Strickler military rifle, GTA$695,000 (GTA$590,750 with the van discount): the newest addition, exclusive to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and only ever found in the van rotation, so check the stock weekly

The reference layer

Sensible order for a new account: AP Pistol and a shotgun in week one, Sticky Bombs at rank 19, the Special Carbine as soon as the wallet allows, the Advanced Rifle unlocking at rank 70 as a free upgrade path, and the Heavy Sniper at rank 90 as the milestone purchase, then Mk II conversions once a MOC or Avenger workshop exists in your life. The Agency Armoury is worth a mention for owners: weapons and ammo without a trip to Ammu-Nation. And the honest advice that saves the most money: ignore almost everything else. The wall of guns is a museum, the loadout above is the game.

Where it fits

The right loadout is quietly load-bearing across this whole desk: suppressed pistols carry the stealth heists, the Combat MG carries the loud ones, and the explosive sniper protects every sell mission you will ever run. Our weapons comparison ranks every class side by side, and everything lives at sixcentral.co.uk/online, on the site and in the SixCentral app.

Ten weapons, the right ammo, and a daily glance at the van. Everything else on the wall is decoration.