GTA 4 Weapons: All 29, Ranked

Grand Theft Auto IV has sixteen weapons. The Lost and Damned adds six and The Ballad of Gay Tony adds eight, giving twenty-nine distinct weapons across the three games. The Combat Shotgun is the best of them for the fights the game actually gives you, and the Carbine Rifle is the better pick the moment the range opens up. Below: the ranking first, then every weapon in all three games with where to find it.

All 29 weapons in GTA IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony: Fist, Baseball Bat, Knife, Pool Cue, Pistol, Combat Pistol, Automatic 9mm, Pistol .44, Pump Shotgun, Combat Shotgun, Sawn-Off Shotgun, Assault Shotgun, Automatic Shotgun, Micro SMG, SMG, Assault SMG, Gold SMG, Assault Rifle, Carbine Rifle, Advanced MG, Sniper Rifle, Combat Sniper, Advanced Sniper, RPG, Grenade Launcher, Grenade, Molotov Cocktail, Pipe Bomb, Sticky Bombs. Full table with where to get each one ↓

All 29 GTA 4 Weapons and Where to Get Them

GTA IV drops real manufacturer names, so the M4 is the Carbine Rifle and the AK is the Assault Rifle. The game also uses two strength tiers for its weapons instead of the three used elsewhere in the series, which is why the gap between a Pistol and a Combat Pistol feels smaller here than it does in San Andreas.

The episodes are not expansions of one shared arsenal: their weapons exist only inside their own episode. There is no way to carry the Sticky Bombs into Niko's story, and no way to bring the Pipe Bomb out of Johnny's.

What Is the Best Weapon in GTA 4?

The Combat Shotgun. Most of GTA IV's shootouts happen in stairwells, apartments and alleys, and at that range it settles an encounter in one or two shots. Its weakness shows the moment the enemy is more than a car's length away, which is where the Carbine Rifle takes over: less damage per shot than the Assault Rifle, but far easier to hold on a target that is half behind cover.

How These Weapons Were Ranked

GTA IV's cover system decides everything. Each weapon is judged on how fast it removes an enemy who is behind cover, how well it holds accuracy when you fire blind, and whether it stays useful when the fight moves. Raw damage matters less than the shape of the encounter. Episode-only weapons are ranked on the same scale but marked as such, because most players asking this question are playing the base game.

Where to Buy Weapons in GTA 4

Three dealers, one per game. Little Jacob serves Niko: once your friendship is high enough he brings a gun van and sells at a sixty per cent discount. Terry Thorpe serves Johnny in The Lost and Damned, and Armando Torres serves Luis in The Ballad of Gay Tony. On top of that, the Underground Gun Shops open across Liberty City after the mission Do You Have Protection?, and weapons lie on the ground at fixed spawn points, glowing faintly rather than floating as they did in the 3D era.

The episode weapons work differently. In The Ballad of Gay Tony the Advanced Weapons Set cheat code unlocks that episode's new guns outright. The Lost and Damned has no equivalent: Johnny's six new weapons come from Terry, or spawn at a safehouse once you have cleared enough Gang Wars.

Where This Arsenal Sits in the Series

Twenty-nine weapons sounds generous until you compare it with what came before and after. GTA III ran on a much shorter list, San Andreas already had a deeper roster with a skill level per weapon class, and GTA V multiplied it again with attachments. What GTA IV does instead is make each gun behave differently under the Euphoria physics, which is why the ranking above weighs handling over damage. If you are picking something to carry them in, the fastest cars in GTA IV are ranked separately, and the GTA IV game page covers the story and the two endings.