RDR2 Cheat Codes: The Full List and the Catch

Want to top off your health before a duel, spawn a war horse or wipe your wanted level? Red Dead Redemption 2 does have cheat codes, but they’re unlike anything else from Rockstar: they’re phrases you type, most of them are unlocked by reading newspapers, and above all, activating even one shuts off saving. Here’s the complete list, plus the one rule you need to know before you dive in.

How to enter cheat codes in RDR2

Unlike GTA San Andreas’s button combos or GTA 4’s phone numbers, RDR2 makes you write out your cheats. Pause the game, open the Settings tab, then scroll all the way down to Cheats. Press Triangle (PlayStation), Y (Xbox) or Enter (PC) to open the text field, type the exact phrase and confirm.

Two details will spare you some frustration. Capitalization doesn’t matter at all (upper or lowercase, your call), but punctuation counts: miss a period or a comma and the cheat gets rejected. Once entered and accepted, each cheat stays saved in the menu and can be toggled on or off with a click, no retyping required.

The catch you need to know before cheating

This is what really sets the game apart, and it’s stricter than in GTA 5. As soon as you activate a cheat, you can no longer save your game, and achievements and trophies are disabled for as long as the session lasts. The takeaway is simple: save before you enter a cheat.

The good news is that none of this is permanent. Just reload a save made before you cheated and you’re back to a clean game that can rack up achievements and trophies. There’s even a pro trick: you can enter a phrase in the menu without activating it, then save right away. The cheat is stored, and you can toggle it on later in a sandbox playthrough without sacrificing your progress in the moment.

That’s also what makes the only money cheat close to pointless: Greed is now a virtue does give you $500 per activation, but since it kills saving, it’s no help funding a real run. Keep this in mind: in RDR2, cheating is a separate way to play, not a shortcut to progress.

Unlocking cheats by buying newspapers

Here’s the game’s other quirk, and it’s very much in Rockstar’s immersive spirit: a good chunk of the cheats aren’t handed to you upfront, you have to find them in the game’s newspapers. Buy each issue from a newsie (you’ll find them in Valentine, Rhodes, Strawberry, Blackwater and Annesburg), open the paper from your satchel and look for the small phrase printed under an article: that’s the cheat to copy into the menu. Until you’ve bought the right issue, the game won’t accept it.

A few specific unlocks worth knowing:

Every RDR2 cheat code

Here are the phrases, sorted by what they do. Type them exactly as shown in Settings, then Cheats, punctuation included.

Health, stamina and Dead Eye

For Dead Eye, five cheats mirror the skill’s natural progression, from automatic target painting all the way to highlighted critical spots:

Weapons and ammo

Horses and wagons

World, honor and the law

No invincibility, no infinite money: a deliberate choice

Series veterans will notice it fast: there’s no infinite health cheat and no unlimited cash. That’s not an oversight. Rockstar has steadily tightened its cheat policy to protect immersion. Back in GTA 5, the invincibility cheat only lasts five minutes before you have to enter it again; in RDR2, invincibility is gone entirely, along with the traditional money cheat. The studio now treats cheating as an optional sandbox mode, walled off from progression, rather than a shortcut to the credits.

One more limit to keep in mind: none of these cheats work in Red Dead Online. The multiplayer mode, which Rockstar has since put on the back burner, has never allowed official cheats.

RDR2 in 2026: a juggernaut that won’t slow down

Nearly seven years after launch, Red Dead Redemption 2 is still a phenomenon. In its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results, Take-Two announced the game had topped 85 million copies sold, making it the 3rd best-selling game of all time, ahead of Wii Sports and behind only Minecraft and GTA 5. It got there without any major content updates and with an online mode left to wither, proof of just how strong Arthur Morgan’s single-player adventure is. We dig into that milestone in our article on RDR2 becoming the 3rd best-selling game ever.

If you want to play it today, the PC version is on Steam and the Rockstar Games Launcher, and the game still runs on PlayStation and Xbox. Still on the fence about jumping in while you wait for GTA VI? Check out our take on whether you should play Red Dead Redemption in 2026, and our roundup of RDR2’s most incredible details to see just how polished its world is.

Hunting for cheats in other Rockstar games? Our GTA 5 cheat codes guide covers the modern era, and our GTA San Andreas cheat codes guide covers the 3D era. And to get ahead of what’s next, we’re keeping a close eye on GTA 6 cheat codes.