What external tools need to be installed to work with Unreal Engine projects in Rider

Question

After installing Rider and opening an Unreal Engine project, Rider reports false errors in source code and/or fails to load the project. It seems somethins is missing on the machine. What do I need to install?

Answer

Developing with Unreal Engine requires a set of tools to be installed on the machine. These requirements are listed on the corresponding UE pages:

• Hardware and Software Specifications;

• Setting Up Visual Studio;

What exact build tools need to be installed?

Generally, the necessary software list includes: Windows SDK, MSVC compiler, .NET SDK. The simplest way to get the necessary tools is to use VS or VS Build Tools installer. Ensuring to select the "Desktop Development with C++", "Game Development with C++" and ".NET Desktop Development" workloads in the VS installer is the easiest way to set everything up.

If one desires to minimize the GB disk consumption used by VS tools, one there is the minimal set of necessary components per UE version tested once on a clean machine:

Note: The UE versions that aren't listed below are also supported. The provided options are the samples verified by the support team based on user reports who encounter related issues. Rider supports UE on Windows since UE 4.25)

Verified with UE 5.6.1 + VS 2022 17.14.21:

Verified with UE 5.8.1 + VS 2026 18.4.3 :

Verified with UE 5.8.1 + VS Build Tools 18.9.0

Note 1: The actual (latest) msvc compiler that VS installer suggests by default can be incompatible with an actual UE version. For example, for UE 5.4.4 the preferred MSVC version is 14.38. At the moment of its UE release, the actual version was 14.40 and it didn't work with UE 5.4.4. So be sure to install a proper MSVC version (for ex. MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.38-17.8) instead of MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (latest)) Check the what exact MSVC version is mentioned as 'preferred' in corresponding UE version release notes.

Note 2: The .NET SDK that comes with VS installation might be lower than the UE requires. It happens when VS isn't updated for a long time and the newly released UE version migrated to a newer .NET SDK usage. Either update the VS, nor install the necessary .NET SDK manually by downloading it from the Download .NET page. Ensure the major version of the .NET SDK used by the specific UE instance exists in C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk .

If for some reason, still there is an issue with opening a project in Rider, follow these steps:

• In Rider "Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolset and Build" set .NET CLI executable path to C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe and the MSBuild version to the one that comes with Visual Studio: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\{year}\{version}\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64\MSBuild.exe ;
• Verify if that helps to avoid any issues with project opening/loading/code analysis;
• If still the issue remains: Tick these three components in the VS installer: "Desktop Development with C++", "Game Development with C++" and ".NET Desktop Development";