FiveM HUD Scripts: What Matters and How to Configure

Your HUD is the most player-visible element on your server — visible every second someone plays. A laggy HUD creates constant friction; a cluttered one communicates low production value before the player has interacted with anything. Here is what a production-grade FiveM HUD must do and how to configure one correctly.

Core Metrics Every FiveM HUD Must Show

Strip away everything optional and a FiveM RP HUD has seven required elements:

• Health — with a visual change on taking damage, not just a static bar
• Armor — separated from health, not stacked on top of it
• Hunger and thirst — if your server has survival mechanics
• Stamina — critical for foot chases; missing it breaks police RP
• Stress indicator — shows emotional state, relevant for serious RP servers
• Vehicle panel — speed, fuel, gear — context-sensitive (only when in a vehicle)
• Voice activity indicator — essential; players need to know when their mic is hot

Everything beyond these seven is optional. Most servers over-add to the HUD and end up with a cluttered screen. Less is more — if information is not needed to make a gameplay decision in the next 30 seconds, it should not be on the HUD.

Performance Standards

A HUD script's resource usage shows in resmon (type it in F8). The targets:

• Idle (on foot, no movement): 0.00ms
• Active (on foot, moving): under 0.02ms
• In vehicle: under 0.05ms

Anything consistently above 0.1ms is a poorly written HUD. Modern React-based NUI HUDs achieve 0.00ms idle because the NUI layer only receives updates when values actually change — no polling loop.

Check any HUD you are evaluating with resmon 1 during active gameplay, not just while standing still. Vehicle entry/exit and damage events often spike poorly optimised HUDs.

Configuration Structure

A well-designed HUD config exposes positions, thresholds and colours in a single file — never scattered across NUI JS files:

Config.HUD = {
    positions = {
        health  = { x = 0.08,  y = 0.88 },
        armor   = { x = 0.08,  y = 0.91 },
        vehicle = { x = 0.92,  y = 0.88 },
    },
    thresholds = {
        health  = { warn = 40, critical = 20 },
        fuel    = { warn = 25, critical = 10 },
    },
    colors = {
        health  = '#22C55E',
        armor   = '#3B82F6',
        hunger  = '#F59E0B',
        thirst  = '#60A5FA',
    },
}

If you have to edit .js, .css or .htmlfiles to change the health bar colour, the HUD was not built for operators. That is a maintenance burden that compounds every update.

Minimap Considerations

Custom minimap frames (circular, bordered, branded) are the most visible quality signal on a FiveM server. When evaluating a HUD, check:

• Does the minimap resize or glitch on the wasted/death screen?
• Does it hide correctly during cutscenes?
• Does the compass update smoothly or in discrete jumps?
• Does it support both day and night map styles?

A minimap that passes all four is rare. Most free HUDs fail at least two. The HUD Pro handles all of these correctly and idles at 0.00ms.

Framework Compatibility

Before purchasing or installing any HUD, confirm it supports your specific inventory and framework version. Common incompatibilities:

• ESX-only HUDs that hardcode ESX.GetPlayerData() rather than using shared exports
• QBCore HUDs that broke after the 2024 QBCore exports refactor
• HUDs that read hunger/thirst from qb-inventory but your server uses ox_inventory

A good HUD abstracts the data layer behind a config flag rather than hardcoding framework calls throughout the Lua files.