Choosing a FiveM anti-cheat in 2026: an honest comparison of verifiable claims
ecosystem
This post is not neutral, and says so: we build Argos. What can be neutral is the method — every figure and claim below was read from the vendor’s own site, anything unreadable was left out, and the jobs Argos does not do are listed explicitly.
Choosing a FiveM anti-cheat usually collapses into "which is better", but the products do not do the same job. Some are runtime detection plus an admin panel; some add a pre-join check; Argos is only the connect-time identity check. The wrong question is which is strongest. The right one is: which layer am I losing in?
Verifiable comparison
| Product | Their own description | Plan pricing as read | Centre of gravity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electron Anticheat | "The most popular FiveM Anticheat", on the market since 2023 | Monthly and Lifetime plans are listed; amounts could not be read (client-rendered) | Runtime detection plus in-game admin panel, replay and live monitoring |
| Phoenix AC | "Server Protection, Reimagined", 4,000+ server owners, 100,000+ bans | Bronze 1 month $35 · Silver 3 months $105 · Diamond 1 year $420 · Lifetime + $235 | Cloud panel, Event Protection, trigger protection plus pre-join prechecks |
| FiveGuard | On the market since 2022; 13,000+ customers | Pricing could not be read | Real-time detection, web admin panel, Safe Events, ban evasion protection, framework support (ESX/QBCore/QBox/vRP) |
| Argos Guard | The connect-time identity layer | Argos Premium $20/month (2-month, 3-month and Lifetime options, via Whop) | Checks identifiers against 110,000+ cross-server ban records and alt-account clusters at connect time |
How to choose
- If cheat software is not being caught while it runs, you are losing in the runtime layer: Electron, Phoenix or FiveGuard.
- If a cloud panel, screenshots, event protection and framework integration matter most, one of the runtime products.
- If players are banned and return on new accounts, you are losing in the identity layer — and that is not a detection problem.
- If you want to catch the same person on the Discord side too, that needs a separate layer (Argos Sentry).
- If you want to see how the data was produced, the openly published dataset is Argos’s.
Where Argos loses
- Argos does not catch cheat software while it runs; it performs no runtime detection.
- There is no cloud admin panel, no screenshots, no replay, no event or trigger protection.
- There are no framework integrations such as ESX/QBCore — if those are your requirements, you are looking at the wrong product.
- The dataset covers only what co-operating servers share; appearing in no record is not proof of innocence.
- It costs $20/month; if you only need runtime detection, a broader and more expensive product may be the right fit.
Per-product comparisons, and which question each of the four layers answers. Compare the layers
Other posts
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