Free FiveM Anticheat: What You Get and What You Don't
A fair look at free FiveM anticheat: what community resources and server convars genuinely catch, where the gaps are, and when free stops being enough.
Roby Einstein
FairShieldAC Security Team
For a small server, free FiveM anticheat tooling is a legitimate answer, and Cfx.re's own documentation tells owners to build exactly that. What free does not include is a maintenance guarantee: someone whose job it is to ship an update the week a mod menu rebuilds, and someone who owes you an answer when it does not. This post ranks no products.
Free FiveM anticheat means four layers you already own: the Cfx.re platform anti-cheat enabled by default on current FXServer builds, txAdmin's bans and whitelist, the server hardening convars, and your own server-side validation. It costs configuration hours instead of money.
Three questions place you. How many concurrent players do you carry, does real money change hands, and would a cheater's good night cost somebody something they cannot get back? If that reads as a handful, no and no, turn on the free controls below and spend your budget elsewhere.
A hardened server running only free tooling will beat a lazy server with a paid subscription. Anti-cheat sits on top of your server's own logic, and if your scripts accept whatever the client sends, nothing you buy repairs that.
Is a free FiveM anticheat enough?
It depends on exposure, and the free surface is wider than it usually gets credit for. The platform runs its own anti-cheat on every server, FXServer ships txAdmin, and the hardening convars cost only the hours to configure and test. Cfx.re's resource FAQ tells owners to "Build your own server-side anticheat resource for your use case and maintain it together with the community!" The platform endorses the free path.
The ceiling comes from the same source: the server security docs open with "The anti-cheat team is always trying to improve the anti-cheat, but sometimes things slip through." For the mechanics, see what a FiveM anti-cheat is.
What you genuinely get without paying anyone
Three layers, and they stack. The built-in platform anti-cheat, with most features enabled by default on current FXServer builds. txAdmin, preinstalled with FXServer and MIT licensed, with warnings, bans, whitelisting and a self-contained player database. And the convar surface, the broadest of the three and the one most often left at defaults.
Consider the official example server.cfg. Beyond a license key and the endpoint lines it sets one security-relevant line, sv_scriptHookAllowed 0, commented as something that "does not guarantee players won't be able to use external plugins". No pure level, no entity lockdown, no request-control filter. The free hardening surface is large, good, and almost entirely opt-in.
- sv_pureLevel - blocks modified client files; level 1 exempts audio and known graphics mods, level 2 blocks all of them.
- sv_entityLockdown - strict stops clients creating entities, globally or per routing bucket.
- sv_filterRequestControl - four documented policy modes for entity control requests, plus a settle timer defaulting to 30000 ms.
- sv_enableNetworkedSounds, plus sv_enableNetworkedScriptEntityStates from server build 8540 - close routing paths the docs call commonly used by malicious actors.
- setr sv_stateBagStrictMode true - keeps state bag writes server-side, from server build 12739.
None of it is copy-paste work; of the list above the docs single out sv_filterRequestControl, alongside the connection and auth convars, as something that "shouldn't be touched unless you know what you are doing", and any of these can break a working resource. Implementation lives in our console command reference and hardening checklist.
The fourth free layer is the one you write. Validating money, inventory, position and permissions server-side rather than trusting the client is the highest-return security work at any budget, and the labour never ends. Server-side versus client-side covers the reasoning.
Where does free anticheat fall short?
The gap is maintenance, and it opens quietly. The resource FAQ's answer on building your own links two community guides. One, from August 2019, carries the author's own notice that it is "quite out-of-date and in need of a rewrite". The other is from September 2019, last updated January 2020. Both authors gave good work away for nothing; nobody was obliged to refresh it when the menus rebuilt.
Several controls above are gated on server build, and Cfx.re support states that "Unsupported server artifacts older than 3 months will not be joinable from the server browser". Identifiers move too: a June 2026 account security update warned the license identifier would change for a small number of players.
The last two gaps carry no number, so we will not invent one. Community resources have no response obligation because nobody entered into one, and MIT licenses come without warranty. Coverage outside your staff's waking hours is a headcount question - see detection after cheat updates.
What does free FiveM anticheat actually cost you?
You will find pages putting a monthly dollar figure on this. I know of no published dataset on FiveM admin hours, so treat any such figure as an estimate rather than a measurement. Measure your own: a weekly hour estimate against each job below, times what that person would otherwise be building. Free shifts cost from your card to your calendar.
- Tracking artifact releases and reading changelogs for new or renamed convars.
- Checking whether the resource you installed has had a commit since the last wave of menu updates.
- Reading detection logs, deciding which hits are real, handling the appeal when you get one wrong.
- Being awake when a cheater picks 3am on a Sunday.
Free vs paid FiveM anticheat, capability by capability
Read it by the last column. The top rows are largely solved free if you do the work; the lower rows are where funding changes the answer. No products are named here - if you have decided to spend, the ranked comparison covers that.
| Capability | Typically available free | What a paid product typically adds | Does it matter for you? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Client file integrity | sv_pureLevel 1 or 2; level 1 exempts audio and known graphics mods | Detection that does not rest on file checks alone | Matters more as your player base grows past people you know |
| Script hook blocking | sv_scriptHookAllowed defaults to false; docs say this does not guarantee no external plugins | Little - largely solved free | Set it either way; it costs nothing |
| Client entity spawning | sv_entityLockdown strict, globally or per routing bucket | Little - also largely solved free | High value, zero cost, non-trivial migration work |
| Entity control theft | sv_filterRequestControl modes 1 to 4 plus a settle timer | Little | Free covers this; the cost is tuning |
| State bag abuse | setr sv_stateBagStrictMode true, server build 12739 and up | Little | Free, but it requires current artifacts |
| Abused net game events | block_net_game_event, sv_enableNetworkedSounds, sv_enableNetworkedScriptEntityStates | Ongoing curation as new events surface | The convar is free; keeping the list current is the recurring cost |
| Server-side validation of game logic | You write it; the docs publish the patterns | Nothing substitutes for this | Universal, and the highest return at any budget |
| Bans, warns, whitelist, notes | txAdmin, bundled with FXServer, MIT, self-contained database | Richer evidence trails and faster triage | Matters when moderation volume exceeds what staff can read |
| Cross-server ban sharing | Not something you build yourself | Varies by vendor; Cfx.re's resource FAQ lists global ban lists among resource types it wants to avoid | Read that FAQ before you make this a deciding factor |
| Detection updates when a cheat rebuilds | Community resources, at community pace | Someone whose job it is, on a published cadence | The core structural trade-off |
| Coverage outside staff waking hours | Your admins, or nobody | Automated response that does not sleep | Scales with concurrent players and time zone spread |
| Accountability to you | None; MIT and forum posts carry no obligation | A counterparty you can open a ticket with | Matters most with a real-money economy |
| Player slots | Free up to 48 with OneSync | Cfx Portal tiers from FiveM Element Club Argentum upward buy slots, not anti-cheat | A separate purchase decision entirely |
When is free the right answer?
When your blast radius is small. A whitelisted or friends-only server, no paid perks, admins who are also the players, and a database you could roll back without anyone losing something they bought. That server is well served by pure level, entity lockdown, txAdmin bans and server-side checks. Under 48 players you sit inside the free OneSync allowance, and Cfx.re's paid tiers buy slots rather than protection. We sell anti-cheat and still think free is right there.
When does free stop being enough?
- Real money changes hands. Once players buy perks or you run a donation store, a cheater is taking something you sold.
- You have staff who are not you. Delegated moderation needs an evidence trail others can read - see false positives and fair appeals.
- Your player count passes the people you recognise, so social enforcement stops working.
- Your queue is the asset. If a bad Friday costs you regulars who do not come back, a missed detection is no longer an annoyance.
That is the line item a paid product has to justify. FairShieldAC runs real-time detection for mod menus, Lua executors, aimbot, silent aim, ESP, godmode, noclip and teleport using client- and server-side behavioural heuristics, with a dashboard and Discord webhook alerts. We publish a dated changelog, which is what you should demand of anyone you pay.
Honest limits, on both sides
- Paying does not fix an unhardened server. The docs are blunt: checks on server events are "a good practice, although it doesn't prevent everything".
- No control is a guarantee, free or paid. Pure level 1 still exempts audio and known graphics mods, and the docs note client-side checks can easily be overridden.
- Some free controls cost player experience: sv_disableClientReplays is documented as disabling Rockstar Editor.
- Paid carries dependency risk: a vendor can stop shipping or lock you out over a license check. Ask before you subscribe, ours included.
- Cross-server ban sharing is less settled than marketing suggests: the resource FAQ lists global ban lists among resource types Cfx.re wants to avoid, and names "protection rackets" run by former cheat authors as a terms violation.
Free FiveM anticheat FAQ
Does FiveM have a built-in anticheat?
Yes, though not as people usually mean it. Cfx.re runs a platform-level anti-cheat and the docs say most of its features are enabled by default on current FXServer builds and higher. It does not cover your server's own game logic, and the docs say things sometimes slip through.
Is txAdmin an anticheat?
No. txAdmin is a web panel for managing and monitoring your server, with warnings, bans, whitelisting and a player database. It enforces and records decisions without detecting cheats, so pairing it with detection, free or paid, is the normal setup.
Can a free anticheat do HWID bans?
Partly. Hardware-related identifiers are documented and available to any resource, so a free script can record them and refuse a connection. What free rarely gives you is the machinery around the ban: re-detection when identifiers change, evidence attached to the record, and someone maintaining the list. HWID bans explained covers the reality.
How can I tell if a free anticheat is still maintained?
- Last commit date. Months of silence against a threat that rebuilds constantly should worry you, though it does not settle the question.
- Open issues. Are recent ones answered, or is the tracker a graveyard?
- Release notes. Do they mention current menus and executors? How Lua executors work shows what current means.
- The README. Plenty of free projects state that they are unmaintained or a learning template; believe them.
That test covers whether a resource is alive; vet it for safety separately.
What to do next
Do the free work first. Read your server.cfg and count how many of the controls above are set, enable the ones you can test, then audit your money and inventory events for anything that trusts client input. If that holds, you have your answer and you have spent nothing. If exposure has outgrown what you can cover, judge subscriptions on cadence, coverage and accountability rather than feature lists - the setup walkthrough and our plans are the next step. Either way, keep the free layer switched on.