11 Best Mafia & Crime Games for Android & iPhone — Just Like GTA San Andreas
If GTA: San Andreas hooked you, here are 11 of the best open-world crime and mafia games you can play on your phone right now — from the full official GTA mobile trilogy to Gameloft's Gangstar series and deep mafia strategy games. Each one comes with an official trailer, app size, a personal rating, and a breakdown of how it actually plays.
📋 Quick List
1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas • 2. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City • 3. Grand Theft Auto III • 4. GTA: Liberty City Stories • 5. GTA: Chinatown Wars • 6. Gangstar Vegas • 7. Gangstar New Orleans • 8. Mafia City • 9. The Grand Mafia • 10. Payback 2 • 11. Real Gangster Crime
1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Developer: Rockstar Games
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~2.5 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Play as Carl 'CJ' Johnson, back in Los Santos after his mother's murder. Steal cars, run missions for rival gangs and crooked cops, and slowly take over the streets of San Andreas across three cities and open countryside.
⭐ My take (4.5/5 — the gold standard of mobile open-world crime): This is basically the reason 'mafia/crime games like San Andreas' is a genre on mobile — a genuinely massive, uncut console classic in your pocket, remastered for touch controls.
2. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Developer: Rockstar Games
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~1.8 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Play as Tommy Vercetti, fresh out of prison and dropped into a drug deal gone wrong. Build a criminal empire from the ground up — buy properties, run businesses, and take over Vice City's underworld one turf war at a time.
⭐ My take (4.4/5 — neon-soaked '80s crime perfection): Smaller and tighter than San Andreas, but the 1980s setting and soundtrack give it a personality all its own. Still one of the best-paced GTA stories on mobile.
3. Grand Theft Auto III
Developer: Rockstar Games
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~1.5 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: A silent protagonist is betrayed and left for dead, then claws his way into Liberty City's mob families. Steal cars, run hits, and climb the ranks of the underworld across three connected islands.
⭐ My take (4.2/5 — the game that invented the genre): Rougher around the edges than its sequels, but historically important — this is where the modern open-world crime game format was born, and it still holds up as a solid, focused campaign.
4. GTA: Liberty City Stories
Developer: Rockstar Games
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~1.6 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Play as Toni Cipriani, a trusted Leone family enforcer returning to a Liberty City in chaos. Navigate warring families, political corruption, and union strikes while rebuilding the Leones' grip on the city.
⭐ My take (4.0/5 — an underrated prequel with real depth): Often overlooked next to San Andreas and Vice City, but the mafia-family storyline here is genuinely one of the strongest in the whole 3D-era trilogy.
5. GTA: Chinatown Wars
Developer: Rockstar Games
Genre: Top-Down Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~900 MB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Play as Huang Lee, heir to a Triad family, robbed and left for dead after delivering an ancestral sword. Rebuild your standing through a top-down, cel-shaded Liberty City filled with drug deals, hijackings, and gang warfare.
⭐ My take (4.5/5 — a completely different (and excellent) take on GTA): The most unique GTA on this list — the top-down comic-book art style and touchscreen-native minigames (hotwiring, drug dealing) make it feel fresh even next to the console-style ports.
6. Gangstar Vegas
Developer: Gameloft
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~2 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Play as a mixed martial artist forced into the mafia's orbit after a fight goes wrong. Explore an open-world Las Vegas, fight your way up through boxing and gunfights, and break free of mob control across a wild story mode.
⭐ My take (4.1/5 — GTA-style chaos with a Vegas twist): Gameloft's answer to GTA on mobile, and a genuinely strong one — bigger and sillier than the Rockstar ports, with alien invasions and zombie waves mixed into the crime story for good measure.
7. Gangstar New Orleans
Developer: Gameloft
Genre: Open-World Crime / Action-Adventure
Approx. App Size: ~2.5 GB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Explore 12 districts of a crime-ridden New Orleans — from the French Quarter to the bayou — completing story missions, fighting biker gangs and Voodoo priests, and battling other players for turf in online Turf Wars.
⭐ My take (4.0/5 — the biggest open world Gameloft ever put on mobile): Even bigger than Gangstar Vegas, with genuine online multiplayer turf battles layered on top of the usual open-world crime formula. The bayou setting stands out from every other game on this list.
8. Mafia City
Developer: YottaGames
Genre: Mafia Strategy (4X)
Approx. App Size: ~500 MB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Build your own crew from four types of recruits, upgrade your turf, form alliances with other players, and fight real-time turf wars against rival mafia families to become the city's Godfather.
⭐ My take (3.9/5 — deep strategy for players who like planning over shooting): A completely different pace from the GTA-style games on this list — this is a real-time strategy management game, more chess than car chase, and works best if you enjoy long-term base-building.
9. The Grand Mafia
Developer: YottaGames / Phantix Games
Genre: Mafia Strategy (4X)
Approx. App Size: ~800 MB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Step into the shoes of an Underboss avenging his father's death. Recruit over a hundred unique Enforcers, join Factions with other players, and fight massive city-wide events like Battle for the City Hall to become the ultimate overlord.
⭐ My take (3.8/5 — Mafia City's bigger, story-heavier sequel): More story-focused than Mafia City, with over 500,000 words of plot and a deep recruit-and-upgrade loop — a good pick if you want a mafia game you can sink weeks into.
10. Payback 2
Developer: Apex Designs Entertainment
Genre: Sandbox Crime / Battle Arena
Approx. App Size: ~250 MB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: No open-world exploration here — instead, jump straight into short, explosive events: street brawls, tank battles, rocket-car races, and heists, either solo against 50 campaign missions or online against real players.
⭐ My take (4.3/5 — bite-sized chaos, no story required): Perfect if the other games on this list feel like too much commitment — Payback 2 strips crime-game chaos down to pure, replayable action in 2-minute bursts, and it's aged really well.
11. Real Gangster Crime
Developer: Naxeex Studio
Genre: Open-World Crime / Third-Person Shooter
Approx. App Size: ~600 MB | Platforms: iOS & Android
🎮 How it plays: Roam a free-roaming crime city as a gangster, completing missions, stealing cars, and fighting rival crews and police in third-person combat — a scaled-down, free take on the classic GTA sandbox loop.
⭐ My take (3.9/5 — a solid free GTA-style sandbox): Won't fool anyone into thinking it's a AAA game, but it's a genuinely playable free sandbox with regular updates, and a reasonable pick if you want San Andreas-style freedom without spending anything.