If you’re looking for the best Sims 4 mods, you’ve come to the right place. The Sims became a must-have simulation game on the PC when it was first released in 2000, and over 20 years later the series is still going strong with a new Sims game on the horizon. You just need to look at the game’s strong library of user-generated content to see where all this success coming from.
The Sims 4 mods scene is thriving, with plenty of weird and wonderful additions to one of the best PC games for living your alternate virtual life. If you just want more choice in terms of customisation options before the Sims 5 release date, there are loads of Sims 4 CC packs and expansion packs available, while the mods below completely overhaul gameplay mechanics. We’ve compiled a list of just some of the best Sims 4 mods accompanied with links to all the download pages. Be sure to read the install instructions for each mod.
You can find many of the best mods over at CurseForge, which hosts a wealth of community-made free mods for The Sims 4 for you to download and enjoy as you please. Installing mods is simple enough – all you need to do is drag the mod files over to the game’s mod folder. In a typical setup, this should be Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods.
The best Sims 4 mods in 2023 are:
Zombie Apocalypse Mod
Made by Sacrificial mods, the zombie apocalypse mod is heavily inspired by Resident Evil, and can see your Sims become terrified or zombified. Trigger a zombie apocalypse with an incredibly cool story mechanic, then decide whether you want to survive or infect.
Better Babies & Toddlers
Let’s be honest, babies are a bit rubbish. Toddlers are even worse, because they can actually talk back at you. It turns out these tiny titans could be better in The Sims 4 as well in terms of functionality and parenting features. Thankfully, Caradriel is here to make things better with this excellent Sims 4 mod.
They wanted to improve the mechanics around sims and their sim children, and Better Babies & Toddlers is the result. It comes with a whole range of features from new interactions, to new moodlets that can be gained by talking about babies. Your sim can even read a parenting magazine to improve their parenting skill. Truly, a mod for parents, possibly developed by a parent. You will need another mod – Lumpinou’s Mood Pack – for this to work properly, and it’s also not compatible with any other mods that use Baby Bassinet interactions.
Sims 4 career mods
One of the best parts of the Sims series is choosing a career path and meeting all the requirements to get your sim to the top of the ladder – which is surprisingly difficult with all the career choices available in The Sims 4. That choice gets even bigger when you consider the huge number of jobs listed on the Sims 4 mods careers page for you to try.
To pick a couple out for you, there’s Sims_Lover’s Hacker career path mod, or you can become a member of the Ministry of Magic with Caelinaarria’s mod. If you’ve ever fancied a life in marine biology, get familiar with fish with xTheLittleCreator’s Oceanography career mod, and – a personal favourite – Simscovery’s Postal Service mod, a humble career that lets your sim make a living by delivering letters and parcels.
Emotional Intertia
Play The Sims 4 enough and you’ll learn to manage sims and their emotions pretty easily. Any sim feeling upset is only a couple of clicks away from returning to being totally fine.
But with the Emotional Interia mod by roBurky your sims will behave and act in a more lifelike way. What this means is that sims’ moods will be prolonged so you’ll need to put in a bit more effort to change their frame of mind. This mod can be challenging, but roBurky explains that “the aim is to make emotions feel a little more meaningful, to make your sims a little more human.” You’ll need to put more thought into the small things in life that could make your sim happy, like talking to friends, doing a hobby they love, or eating a really tasty grilled cheese.
Have some personality, please!
Created by PolarBearSims, this mod changes the way that sims act to better reflect their personality. The Have Some Personality Please! mod allows you to choose actions that are more accurate to each sim’s traits, moods, conversations, and relationships.
By removing a sim’s ability to engage in idle chit-chat they can stay true to their nature. “If they are romantic they like to choose romance over mean interactions. If they are extremely mad they are bound to yell at anyone and whoever nearby,” PolarBearSims explains. The mod also includes more interaction with aliens, cats, and dogs, plus toddlers will also act more inline with their traits.
Meaningful stories
RoBurky returns with another mod that changes how your sim reacts to life events and personal experiences in the game. The Meaningful Stories mod ensures that your sim expresses their emotions to the people who matter, or who are important to them, and will affect how those memories stay with them throughout their life.
“Your sim might get into a depressive rut for days that takes planning and effort and some help from their friends to overcome,” roBurky explains. “Or your sim’s creative nature might be filling them with inspiration when they ought to be focused instead, so you send them to work on their novel to get the ideas out of their head.”
This mod also sits well with roBurky’s True Happiness mod as it makes your sim’s experience with happiness more meaningful. Now your sim will only feel truly happy when something extraordinary happens to them.
MC Command Centre
For mod fans who really want to get into the nitty-gritty details of playing The Sims then check out the MC Command Centre mega-mod by Deaderpool. This mod is a collection of smaller mods that give you the power to make small adjustments and tweaks to how sims live their lives.
Don’t like a particular item of clothing? You can blacklist it. Is an NPC interaction annoying you? Take control of that NPC and change it. This mod also comes with story-progression mechanics which has been dearly missed since The Sims 3.
MorphMaker
MorphMaker by CmarNYC lets you sculpt and shape every inch of your sim exactly the way you want. You can use this mod to change the appearance of normal sims, vampires, aliens, and even pets to exactly what you had in mind, or something completely random. CmarNYC has kindly linked to tutorials on the mod’s page so check those out too.
UI Cheats
Having to memorise individual cheats and enter them as a console command is so 2000 and late. Give your brain a rest by installing the UI Cheats mod from weerbesu. UI Cheats gives you the power to control every aspect of Sims 4 without having to navigate through awkward menus. Infinite money? No problem. Want to learn every skill possible? Simple. Gain access to everything you’ve ever wanted from Sims 4 by installing UI Cheats.
Hopefully, these Sims 4 mods are enough to keep you going and keep your love of the series alive. Sims 5, or Project Rene as it’s currently being called is coming eventually, but there’s not been any confirmation about Sims 5 mods or mod support.
Remember this is just a small selection of what’s on offer. Do browse the CurseForge Sims 4 mods hub for more, and if you’re feeling extra adventurous right now then there’s a whole other area of the community dedicated to just Sims sex mods, and Sims 4 cheats can also help shake up your gameplay.
Original article written by Rachel Watts, with additional contributions by Jordan Forward.