Godot Outpaces Unity in Direct Engine Test by Indie Developer

A direct comparison between Godot and Unity by indie developer, Thomas Grové, has added new evidence to the growing shift toward open-source game engines. Godot outperformed Unity across most workflow and development benchmarks in a side-by-side test project.

Grové, founder of Japanese co-development studio Studio Interrupt, recreated the same early-stage horror game prototype in both engines to evaluate their real-world usability and technical performance. The project included a character controller, scene transitions, shaders, camera transition systems, and interactable objects.

The developer stated that he wanted an “apples-to-apples comparison” instead of evaluating separate projects built under different conditions. The experiment was designed to help determine whether he should continue development in Unity or move fully to Godot.

Godot vs Unity Workflow Speeds Show Major Difference

The largest performance gaps appeared during common development tasks. According to Grové’s tests, Godot loaded projects in roughly 13.5 seconds, while Unity took approximately 1 minute and 20 seconds from launch to opening the same project configuration.

Script compilation produced an even wider gap.

Godot compiled the gameplay controller script in around half a second, while Unity required roughly 15.5 seconds for the same process. Export times also heavily favored Godot, with optimized project builds completing in about two seconds compared to Unity’s roughly 53-second export pass.

Meanwhile, the install size was another major difference. Grové measured Unity’s combined installation footprint at around 21GB (gigabytes) when including Unity Hub and the editor, while Godot occupied approximately 164MB (megabytes).

The comparison was not entirely one-sided. Unity ultimately produced higher peak framerates in final builds, reaching between 650 and 850 frames per second (FPS) during some tests, while optimized Godot builds reached similar but slightly lower ranges depending on rendering settings.

Grové however noted that both engines operated far above his target of 60 FPS, making the difference less important for the project itself.

Note: Results may vary. After restarting the PC and closing all background software, Godot exceeded 1,050 FPS and Unity surpassed 850 FPS, suggesting the gap between the two engines is narrower than initially recorded.

Indie Developers Continue Moving Toward Godot

The findings arrive as more indie developers reconsider Unity following backlash over the company’s controversial runtime fee policy changes introduced in 2023.

Yet, some viewers argued that Grové's prototype was too small to reflect large-scale production workloads. Even so, the consistency of the workflow results reinforced Godot's growing reputation for faster iteration speeds and lower hardware demands.

Grové ultimately concluded that he would likely continue development in Godot, stating that the engine “beat Unity on every metric except for the final output FPS.”