Most paid FiveM anticheats list heartbeat protection or anti-tamper on their feature page. A heartbeat protects against one problem: a cheat that switches the anticheat off on the player's machine and carries on playing.
What a heartbeat does
The client half of an anticheat runs on the player's machine, so a cheat on that machine can try to stop it. If it succeeds, a client-only anticheat goes quiet and the player looks clean. The server expects to keep hearing from the anticheat, and when it stops, the server applies the action you set.
Where it fits
A heartbeat catches no cheats by itself. It protects the checks that do. Client detection catches cheats on the player's machine, and server-side event validation protects your economy even when the client is lost. The heartbeat stops a cheat from switching off the first without anyone noticing.
What goes wrong with a weak one
- Network drops. A player on a bad connection goes quiet for reasons that have nothing to do with cheating. A strict heartbeat set to ban punishes them for it.
- Client crashes. When the game crashes, the anticheat stops with it. A heartbeat that bans on silence bans a player whose game crashed.
- A heartbeat a cheat can fake. If a cheat can stop the anticheat and keep the heartbeat looking healthy, the server cannot tell a stopped anticheat from a running one.
What to ask a vendor
- Can a cheat keep the heartbeat looking healthy after it stops the anticheat?
- What happens on a missed heartbeat, and can you change it?
- How does it avoid banning players who crashed or lost their connection?
- Is it one switch, or can you turn off the single check that misfires on your server?
A vendor who can answer all four has thought about the failure cases above.
Raven's heartbeat
Heartbeat ships on and set to kick, so a player who crashed or lost their connection only has to reconnect. It catches a client that stops responding, a client that has been frozen or tampered with, and a spoofed player model, position, weapon or vehicle. Each of those is its own check with its own switch.
From resource 1.9.2 a missed heartbeat is always a kick, even when you set the action to ban. The other checks use the action you set. Every hit is logged with its evidence.
The heartbeat overview has the summary, and the Heartbeat section of the detections reference lists each check with its log reason.