GTA Online Bail Office Guide: Prices, Payouts and Targets

Ever wanted to switch sides and hunt criminals instead of being one? GTA Online’s Bail Office puts you in the boots of a bounty hunter: spot a target, capture them (alive, ideally), haul them back to a cell and cash in. Here’s how to get the business started, what it costs and what a bounty really pays.

Bottom Dollar Bounties: Maude passes the torch

The Bail Office arrived on June 25, 2024 with the Bottom Dollar Bounties update. Its setup is a neat nod to Story Mode: Maude Eccles, the veteran fugitive hunter, is hanging up her handcuffs and looking for someone to take over. So you step in to run Bottom Dollar Bail Enforcement alongside her daughter, Jenette, whom Rockstar introduces as an apprentice bounty hunter.

GTA V fans know Maude well. Back in the 2013 single-player campaign, she was already emailing Trevor Philips through the “Bail Bond” Strangers and Freaks series, sending him after four fugitives (Ralph Ostrowski, Larry Tupper, Glenn Scoville and Curtis Weaver). The game laid down the golden rule of the trade right there: bringing a target in alive paid $10,000, killing them only $5,000. Once all four were locked up, Maude retired. Bottom Dollar Bounties takes that exact idea and turns it into a full, repeatable business.

How to start bounty hunting

It all kicks off with a call from Maude, which comes in at random in Freemode once the update is installed. From there, just open the Maze Bank Foreclosures website in your phone’s browser and buy one of the five available offices.

Every Bail Office is basically a small private police station. You get a Bail Enforcement System computer listing the current targets, a holding cell for captures waiting to be processed, access to security cameras, a safe for your earnings, and a two-car garage that holds your personal vehicles plus the company-liveried Declasse van, the one you use to bring fugitives back. Your catches are then “processed” over time in the cell, and the money drops once the process is done.

Standard vs. Most Wanted: how bounties work

The dashboard shows two kinds of targets. Standard targets, three at a time, refresh every hour: according to Rockstar, they’re your everyday small-time crooks, and you can run as many as you like. The Most Wanted target, on the other hand, shows up only once a day and goes after the cream of the local criminal crop: crooked CEOs, movie stars, legendary street racers.

The key rule, straight from Maude’s playbook, is that this isn’t the Wild West: a target is worth far more alive than dead. The Stun Gun is the ideal tool for dropping a fugitive without killing them before you load them into the van. If things go sideways and the target doesn’t make it, you can still deliver the body to the Los Santos County morgue, but the bounty takes a big hit.

In practice, a regular player sweeps up the three standard targets on the fly and saves the daily Most Wanted for last: that’s where the big check is, especially when Rockstar boosts the business’s payouts during an event week.

Which Bail Office to buy, and for how much

All five offices are equal when it comes to missions: they all give you access to the same targets. The only real factor, just like with The Chop Shop’s Salvage Yard, is distance. A central office saves you endless drives out to fugitives.

Then come the upgrades. Three decor styles (Penal Vintage for free, Criminal Patterns for GTA$125,000, Courtroom Teak for GTA$145,000), private quarters (GTA$295,000) so you can respawn on site, a weapon locker (GTA$175,000) and armor for the van so it can soak up bullets during transport. The most interesting add-on is the agents: up to two employees (GTA$750,000 for the first, GTA$1,500,000 for both) that you send out hunting on your behalf, which fills the safe passively and speeds up processing of captures in the cell. Fully kitted out, the Bail Office climbs to roughly GTA$4,860,000, but none of it is required to get started: bounties are up and running as soon as you buy the bare office.

Dispatch Work: the DLC’s other new feature

Bottom Dollar Bounties isn’t just about the Bail Office. The update also adds Dispatch Work, a side gig for Officer Vincent Effenburger, an LSPD cop fed up with the corruption inside his own department. These are off-the-books police missions you launch in Freemode.

There are two requirements to get in. First, you need to have completed the Slush Fund mission from the Cluckin’ Bell Farm Raid to unlock the three new police vehicles (Declasse Impaler SZ Cruiser, Bravado Greenwood and Bravado Dorado) at Warstock Cache & Carry, or reuse a law enforcement vehicle you already own. Second, you have to keep a low profile: you can’t work for Vincent while you’re registered as a CEO, VIP or MC President. Once you’re behind the wheel of an eligible vehicle, request the job and hit the road.

Is the Bail Office worth it in 2026?

Yes, as long as you enjoy active play. The Bail Office isn’t passive income like the nightclub: it rewards tracking, tailing and clean captures. Running the three standard targets plus the daily Most Wanted adds up to a solid payday for a handful of missions, all playable alone in a private session. That makes it an excellent pick for anyone who wants to build up a bankroll without relying on a crew.

If you’re building a criminal empire, it pairs nicely with other solo staples like the Cayo Perico Heist and the Salvage Yard. To see where the Bail Office fits in the bigger picture, check out our rundown of the best businesses in GTA Online and, if you’re just getting started, our beginner’s guide.

That leaves the question hanging over all of these businesses: will they survive the jump to the next generation? We dig into it in our analysis of the future of GTA Online after Grand Theft Auto VI, due out on its November 19, 2026 release date. Until then, chasing Jenette’s bounties remains one of the most fun ways to fill your bank account in Los Santos.