Saints Row: The Third Remastered is the closest overall GTA alternative if you want an open-world city, cars, guns, criminal missions, side activities, customization, and the freedom to cause trouble between story objectives.
It is much sillier than Rockstar’s series, but mechanically it covers more of the same ground than most rivals.
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If GTA’s crime story matters more than pure sandbox chaos, start with Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition. If you mainly want a modern city full of systems you can manipulate, Watch Dogs 2 is the stronger pick. This update scores ten games against six parts of the GTA formula rather than treating every open-world action game as equally similar.
Quick answer: Saints Row: The Third Remastered is the closest overall match, Sleeping Dogs is best for a grounded crime story, Watch Dogs 2 is best for systemic city gameplay, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best choice if what you really want is Rockstar’s world design rather than another modern crime game.
Updated: October 2026. The old 15-game list has been rebuilt around ten stronger recommendations, a transparent similarity model, current editions, clearer trade-offs, and refreshed G2A.COM availability.
Research basis: Official store information, current platform and edition checks, G2A.COM marketplace availability, and editorial comparison against the recurring design traits of modern GTA games.
Checked: October 14, 2026.
Table of Contents
- What makes a game like GTA?
- How the match scores work
- Games like GTA compared
- Pick based on what you like most about GTA
- 1. Saints Row: The Third Remastered
- 2. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
- 3. Watch Dogs 2
- 4. Mafia III: Definitive Edition
- 5. Red Dead Redemption 2
- 6. Cyberpunk 2077
- 7. LEGO City Undercover
- 8. Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut
- 9. Just Cause 3
- 10. Bully: Scholarship Edition
- Which game is closest to GTA?
- More GTA reading on G2A News
- Games like GTA FAQ
What makes a game like GTA?
A game does not become “like GTA” just because it has an open map and a few cars. The modern Grand Theft Auto formula is a specific mix of urban exploration, crime, driving, third-person action, sandbox freedom, and a world full of distractions that make ignoring the main mission almost as important as following it.
How the match scores work
Each game receives 0-5 points in all six categories above. Every category is weighted equally, so the maximum score is 30 points. The percentage is simply the achieved score divided by 30 and rounded to a whole number. These are editorial similarity scores, not review scores. A 90% match means the game recreates a large part of the GTA experience, not that it is objectively a 9/10 game.
Games like GTA compared
| Game | Match | Best GTA-like trait | Biggest difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saints Row: The Third Remastered | 93% | Crime sandbox and chaos | Much more absurd tone |
| Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition | 87% | Urban crime story | More melee-focused |
| Watch Dogs 2 | 87% | Systemic modern city | Hacking drives the missions |
| Mafia III: Definitive Edition | 80% | Building a criminal empire | More repetitive structure |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 87% | Rockstar world reactivity | Western instead of modern city |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 87% | Dense city and side stories | First-person RPG structure |
| LEGO City Undercover | 80% | Family-friendly city sandbox | You play the cop |
| Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut | 73% | Crime drama and side activities | Tiny, dense districts instead of a driving sandbox |
| Just Cause 3 | 70% | Open-world destruction | Little crime-story DNA |
| Bully: Scholarship Edition | 63% | Classic Rockstar mission design | School setting and almost no car culture |
Pick based on what you like most about GTA
1. Saints Row: The Third Remastered 93% match
Saints Row: The Third Remastered is the cleanest mechanical substitute for modern GTA on this list. You get a large city, a criminal organization, cars, weapons, missions, side activities, customization, police pressure, property, and endless opportunities to stop following the objective marker and start creating your own mess. The biggest reason it does not feel exactly like GTA is tone: Steelport quickly abandons plausibility in favor of weapons, missions, and jokes that are deliberately ridiculous.
2. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition 87% match
Sleeping Dogs comes closest to GTA when GTA is being a crime drama rather than a toy box. Hong Kong is dense, busy, and full of races, favors, collectibles, vehicles, and distractions, while the undercover story constantly puts Wei Shen between police work and Triad loyalty. The big twist is combat: hand-to-hand fighting and environmental takedowns matter far more here than they do in GTA.
3. Watch Dogs 2 87% match
Watch Dogs 2 has the cars, police, city exploration, third-person action, co-op features, and mission freedom a GTA player expects, then layers hacking over all of it. That changes the feel considerably. A restricted area can be attacked with guns, infiltrated with stealth, observed with drones, or disrupted through cameras, vehicles, and connected objects. If your favorite GTA moments are the ones where a normal city suddenly becomes a system you can exploit, this is one of the best alternatives.
4. Mafia III: Definitive Edition 80% match
Mafia III is much more directed than GTA, but its basic pieces overlap strongly: an American city, cars, guns, organized crime, police, territory, and a protagonist climbing through an underworld power structure. New Bordeaux is also one of the better period cities in the genre. The compromise is structure. Taking apart rackets can become repetitive, so it works better for players who value crime fiction and atmosphere over GTA’s freer sandbox rhythm.
5. Red Dead Redemption 2 87% match
Red Dead Redemption 2 is not an urban GTA clone, but it may be the most important alternative if what you like is Rockstar itself. The mission structure, outlaw story, ambient encounters, law system, shops, minigames, strangers, robberies, exploration, and huge number of contextual interactions all feel related to GTA’s design language. What changes is pace. Horses, camp routines, long rides, and a heavier animation system make the frontier much slower than Los Santos.
6. Cyberpunk 2077 87% match
Cyberpunk 2077 is the pick for players who want GTA’s ability to vanish into a city but do not mind changing genres. Night City is built around districts, vehicles, street crime, police, jobs, shops, side stories, and long stretches where the main plot can wait. The major difference is RPG structure. Builds, dialogue, loot, cyberware, first-person combat, and character progression matter far more than they do in GTA.
7. LEGO City Undercover 80% match
LEGO City Undercover is here for a specific reason: structurally, it is far closer to GTA than its age rating suggests. There is a large city, dozens of districts, vehicles everywhere, open exploration, missions, collectibles, disguises, comedy, and two-player co-op. The obvious reversal is that Chase McCain is a police officer hunting criminals rather than building a criminal empire.
8. Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut 73% match
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut barely cares about driving, so it is not a GTA substitute in the traditional sense. It earns its place through the other half of the fantasy: criminals, memorable urban districts, side stories, businesses, absurd distractions, serious main drama, and the feeling that you can walk fifty meters and find another strange thing to do. Kamurocho and Sotenbori are tiny compared with Los Santos, but they are dramatically denser.
9. Just Cause 3 70% match
Just Cause 3 is for the person who finishes a GTA mission and immediately asks, “What happens if I steal a helicopter and destroy half the map?” It has cars, bikes, boats, aircraft, guns, a huge open world, physics, stunts, and far more destruction than GTA. The missing piece is crime. Rico is fighting a dictatorship, not building a criminal career, so the overlap is almost entirely in freedom, vehicles, combat, and chaos.
10. Bully: Scholarship Edition 63% match
Bully is the least obvious recommendation here, but it is one of the best ways to recognize Rockstar’s older open-world formula outside GTA. Bullworth has a daily rhythm, factions, authority figures, side missions, minigames, collectibles, vehicles, weapons, shops, and plenty of room to ignore class and create trouble. The difference is scale and subject matter: this is school rebellion rather than organized crime.
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Which game is closest to GTA?
Saints Row: The Third Remastered is the closest overall alternative. It matches the largest number of GTA’s core systems at once: urban exploration, crime, cars, guns, side activities, customization, police pressure, and sandbox chaos. Sleeping Dogs is the better choice if you want a more grounded crime story, while Watch Dogs 2 is stronger if the appeal is interacting with a modern city as a collection of systems.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the exception worth remembering. It looks least like GTA on the surface, but if what you really miss is Rockstar’s mission design, ambient encounters, reactive NPCs, law systems, and obsessive environmental detail, it can feel more familiar than many games with skyscrapers and sports cars.
More GTA reading on G2A News
- History of GTA: From top-down mayhem to 3D sandbox
- Our best GTA series memories
- Should you play GTA Vice City before GTA VI?
- Games like Bully
Games like GTA FAQ
What should I play after GTA V?
Start with Saints Row: The Third Remastered if you want another city sandbox with cars, guns, crime, and chaos. Pick Sleeping Dogs instead if GTA V’s story missions and criminal characters mattered more than pure sandbox freedom.
What game feels most like GTA but is more serious?
Sleeping Dogs and Mafia III are the strongest choices. Sleeping Dogs is tighter and more melee-focused, while Mafia III is more interested in building a criminal organization across a period American city.
Is there a family-friendly game like GTA?
Yes. LEGO City Undercover uses a very similar open-city structure with vehicles, missions, collectibles, free exploration, and co-op, but replaces adult crime and violence with LEGO comedy and police work.
Different roads out of Los Santos
There still is not a perfect non-Rockstar replacement for Grand Theft Auto because the series combines too many things at once. That is why the best alternative depends on which part you actually want more of. Saints Row covers the broad mechanical formula, Sleeping Dogs delivers the crime drama, Watch Dogs 2 turns the city into a system, and Red Dead Redemption 2 carries Rockstar’s world-building into a completely different era.