Every "best FiveM scripts" list is a pile of forty names with no order. That's useless when you're building a server, because the scripts you need are not interchangeable: some are the foundation everything else stands on, some are the walls, and most of the ones people argue about are furniture.
This is the list by layer, from the bottom up. For each layer: what it does, the free option when the free option is genuinely the right one, and where paying makes sense. It's written by someone who sells scripts — see the disclosure at the end — so the free recommendations are the ones I'd make anyway.
The foundation: scripts you install once and never think about
Framework — ESX, QBCore or QBox
The framework is the layer that knows who a player is: identity, money, job, inventory hooks. Every other script talks to it. Three choices dominate in 2026:
- QBox (
qbx_core) — the modern fork of QBCore, built around ox_lib, ox_inventory and ox_target. The cleanest codebase of the three and the one most new servers pick. - QBCore (
qb-core) — the largest ecosystem of ready-made scripts and the widest hiring pool of developers who know it. - ESX (
es_extended) — the oldest, still actively maintained as ESX Legacy, with a huge back catalogue.
Database — oxmysql
oxmysql is the MySQL wrapper the whole ecosystem targets. Free, and there's no real alternative worth naming. Start it first.Shared library — ox_lib
ox_lib provides the menus, notifications, progress bars, callbacks and utility functions that hundreds of scripts call instead of shipping their own. Free. On QBox it's already assumed; on ESX and QBCore it's the single most common dependency in a paid script's requirements list.Bridge — hz_lib
A bridge sits between scripts and whatever framework, inventory, target and notification system the server happens to run, so the script doesn't have to know. hz_lib is ours, and it's free: it detects es_extended, qb-core or qbx_core, the inventory, the target and the menu system at startup, and gives every HZ script one admin panel to be configured from. If you run no HZ scripts you don't need it; if you run one, it's how that script works on your framework without a framework-specific build.
The walls: systems every RP server exposes to players
Inventory — ox_inventory (or your framework's)
ox_inventory is the reference: free, weight-based, with stashes, shops, crafting hooks and a metadata system that other scripts build on.qb-inventory and qs-inventory are the other two most scripts support. Whichever you pick, pick before buying gameplay scripts — an inventory is the dependency that's hardest to change later, because every item-based script ships its items in the inventory's format.
Targeting — ox_target or qb-target
Targeting is how a player interacts with a prop, a vehicle or an NPC — the "press E" replacement. ox_target and qb-target are the two everyone supports. Scripts that render their own interaction prompt in 3D instead — HZ-TextUi does this and plugs into both — are a matter of taste, not of necessity.
Voice — pma-voice
pma-voice is free, proximity-based, and the default on every framework. It supports radio and phone channels through the resources that need them. There's no reason to look elsewhere unless you're paying for a hosted voice service.Phone
The phone is the app platform of your server: banking, messages, garage, and — for scripts that offer one — companion apps. The main options are LB Phone, QS Smartphone, NPWD (free, open source) and the framework's own basic phone. This one is worth paying for on a serious RP server: the phone is the UI players spend the most time in after the inventory, and it's the surface other scripts extend. HZ-Weather and HZ-Bets ship free companion apps for LB Phone and QS Smartphone.
Admin — txAdmin
txAdmin ships with the server artifacts; you're already running it if you followed the setup guide. It handles restarts, bans, player history, resource management and scheduled tasks. For in-game moderation on top of it, the framework's own admin menu or a community one is enough to start.The gameplay: where servers actually differ
Everything above is the same on most well-run servers. This is where you choose, and where the free options are sometimes fine and sometimes clearly not.
Character appearance
illenium-appearance — free, supports all three frameworks, handles clothing shops, barbers and tattoo shops. Good enough for most servers; the paid alternatives mainly buy you a nicer UI.Weather and time
The default answer is a free sync script — Renewed-Weathersync on QBCore, cd_easytime or vSync elsewhere — which keeps every player seeing the same sky. That's all most servers need. Where a paid script earns its place is when you want weather to be gameplay: zones with different weather, seasons, temperature, storms that start on schedule. That's what HZ-Weather is for, and the full weather comparison is honest about when you don't need it.
Jobs and economy
Most servers start from the framework's stock jobs — police, EMS, mechanic — and the community scripts that extend them (ps-dispatch, wasabi_police, okokGarage, and the like, depending on framework). This is the layer with the most paid scripts and the most churn. Advice that holds regardless of what's fashionable: one job at a time, and check resmon after each. A jobs stack is where server performance is usually lost.
Activities: the scripts players remember
Jobs give players a reason to log in; activities give them a reason to stay. This is where the "menu problem" shows up most: a lot of activity scripts are a menu with a progress bar, and players feel it.
Two of ours are built specifically against that. HZ-Cook has no cooking menu at all — food sits on a grill, changes as it cooks across a hundred visual stages, and burns if you walk away. HZ-Bets is a sportsbook on real fixtures with server-authoritative odds. We're not the only ones doing physical, menu-free gameplay, but it's the criterion we'd use to judge any activity script: does the player look at the world, or at a UI?
Screens and media
Cinema screens, in-vehicle displays, billboards and TVs are a common request and a common source of performance problems, because most implementations open one browser per screen. HZ-Television synchronises them across players from one source; the free alternatives are typically single-screen and unsynced. If you only need one cinema, free is fine.
Polish: audio, loading screen, pause menu
These don't change gameplay; they change how the server feels in the first five minutes, which is when most players decide whether to stay. A per-player audio mixer (HZ-AudioMixer), a loading screen your admins can edit without a deploy (HZ-Loading), a pause menu that isn't the stock GTA one (HZ-PauseMenu). Free equivalents exist for each and are worth trying first; the paid ones buy you the admin-side tooling and the support.
The order to install them
Not alphabetical, and not "the exciting ones first":
- Framework, oxmysql, ox_lib — and confirm the server boots clean.
- Inventory, target, voice, phone — the surfaces everything else plugs into.
- txAdmin configured: restarts, backups, permissions.
- Appearance, weather sync, stock jobs — a playable baseline.
- One gameplay script at a time, each checked in resmon before the next.
ensure, start order, escrow — and the errors you'll hit on the way.
Free vs paid, honestly
The foundation and the walls are free and should stay free: the open-source projects above are better maintained, better documented and more widely supported than any paid equivalent, because every script author targets them.
Paid scripts earn their price at the gameplay layer, on three conditions: the free option is genuinely thin (not just less pretty), the script is documented well enough that you don't need the author, and the author answers when you do. A paid script that fails any of those is a worse deal than a free one with an open issue tracker.
Disclosure: HZ Scripts sells the scripts linked above under our name. Every one of them runs on the free stack described here — that's the point of hz_lib — and none of them replaces a foundation script. The free recommendations are what we run on our own server.