The fastest check costs you five seconds: look at the domain. If it contains tebex.io — as in storename.tebex.io or a custom domain that carries the string — you are on the official monetisation infrastructure that Cfx.re mandates for FiveM server monetisation. If it doesn’t, you have no baseline guarantee about who you are paying or whether your purchase will ever arrive.
That one check filters out most of the junk. But it doesn’t filter out all of it, so the rest of this guide covers what separates a real FiveM marketplace from the kind of operation that exists for sixty days, takes a run of orders, and then disappears.
Why the Domain Is the First Signal, Not Just One Signal Among Many
Tebex issues subdomains (yourstore.tebex.io) only to accounts that have passed identity verification and agreed to Tebex’s creator terms. When a store uses a custom domain — say, scripts-tebex.io or cars-tebex.io — you can confirm it resolves through Tebex’s infrastructure. The point is that Tebex controls who gets to use its platform. A lookalike domain — tebax.io, tebex.net, tebex-store.com, or any variation that plays with spelling or TLD — has no connection to Tebex’s systems, buyer protections, or dispute process.
Scam stores deliberately choose domains that blur in your browser bar after you’ve already decided to buy. They rely on the visual similarity. Checking the domain before you click a payment link — not after — is the habit that stops you funding them.
What a Real FiveM Marketplace Looks Like
Beyond the domain, legitimate stores share a set of characteristics that take more than a weekend to fake:
- Tebex/Keymaster fulfilment. Your purchase lands in your Cfx.re Keymaster account, bound to your server licence key. This only works through Tebex’s native FiveM integration. If a store promises “instant download via Discord DM” or a shared cloud link, Keymaster is not in the chain — meaning escrow protection is not either.
- Update history you can verify. Real asset developers publish changelogs. A product page with a creation date two years ago and a dozen version entries tells you the developer is still active. A listing with a single version and no update log is a red flag regardless of how polished the screenshots are.
- Consistent seller identity. Legitimate sellers have the same store name, same Tebex URL, and the same Cfx.re forum profile going back months or years. Cross-reference the store URL against the developer’s forum posts. If those threads exist and the domain matches, the seller has skin in the game.
- A dispute path. Tebex has a chargeback and dispute process. If a seller delivers something that doesn’t match the listing, you have recourse. With an off-platform payment — PayPal Friends & Family, crypto, direct card — you have nothing, and that payment method selection is deliberate.
- Resmon figures in the listing. Any developer who actually runs their scripts on a server knows their resource monitor numbers. An experienced seller lists idle and active resmon values. A reseller who scraped a script from a forum rarely knows what those numbers are, because they never ran it.
What a Fly-by-Night Reseller Looks Like
The pattern is consistent enough that you can recognise it before you’re burned:
- Fresh domain, no history. Run a WHOIS lookup. A domain registered in the last three months, with no indexed content, selling “premium” FiveM packs at a deep discount is not a new legitimate business — it’s an operation timed to a buying cycle. Resellers know new server owners spin up before holidays, server wipe seasons, and popular game update drops. That’s when they launch.
- Copied listings, mismatched branding. Stolen product descriptions copy the language of the original creator but with different screenshots, different prices, and occasionally different script names. If you paste a sentence from the listing into a search engine and find it on a legitimate Tebex store with a different seller, you are looking at a rip.
- Off-platform payment demands. If checkout redirects you away from Tebex’s payment flow to a personal PayPal, a crypto wallet, or a terminal with a different company name, stop. That redirect is the tell. Tebex processes payments on-platform and holds the funds through delivery.
- Support that evaporates after purchase. Pre-sale Discord responses within minutes; post-sale silence for weeks. Resellers have no development context, no access to the original source, and no ability to fix bugs. When your ESX economy script conflicts with ox_inventory and you need a patch, “we’ll look into it” is all you get — until the Discord server quietly closes.
- No Cfx.re presence. Real FiveM asset developers post in the Releases section. They have reply threads with users asking questions, reporting bugs, and getting answers. Search the script name on the Cfx.re forum. If nothing comes up, or if the only thread is a link to a dodgy store, the developer doesn’t exist.
Stores That Carry the tebex.io Domain
If you’re looking for verified starting points, stores operating on the tebex.io infrastructure with documented asset catalogues include scripts-tebex.io for general FiveM scripts, assets-tebex.io for a broader range of server assets, and cars-tebex.io for vehicle packs. Each of those domains resolves through Tebex’s infrastructure, which means Keymaster fulfilment, a real dispute path, and a seller identity tied to a verified account.
The Practical Pre-Purchase Checklist
Run through this before entering any payment detail:
- Does the domain contain tebex.io? If not, stop here.
- Does the product listing include a version history with dates?
- Can you find the seller’s name on the Cfx.re forum with posts older than 90 days?
- Does the listing specify ESX or QBCore compatibility, resmon values, and a dependency list? (Developers who built the script know these without looking them up.)
- Does checkout stay within Tebex’s payment flow, not redirect to a third-party processor?
- Is there a support channel — Discord, ticket system — with visible activity from the past 30 days?
Every legitimate seller passes all six without effort. A reseller fails at least two, and usually fails the domain check before you get to the rest.
One Rule for Your Whole Team
If you run a server with co-owners or an admin team that handles asset purchases, make the domain rule explicit: any script, MLO, vehicle, or EUP purchase has to come from a store whose domain contains tebex.io, or it goes through you first. That single policy closes the largest attack surface the fly-by-night operators rely on — the impulse buy from someone who just wants the resource running tonight.
The domain check is not foolproof on its own; a bad actor can open a legitimate Tebex store too. But it eliminates the entire category of lookalike-domain scam stores instantly, and the remaining checks — update history, Cfx.re presence, Keymaster delivery, resmon figures — handle the rest. Together they take under five minutes and they cost nothing.