Developer Thomas Grové shared a video on May 17 showcasing his effort to construct the same game using both Unity and Godot Engine, aiming to evaluate their differences. The video has since sparked widespread discussion among developers on Reddit regarding the pros and cons of the two engines.
Unity and Godot Engine are both popular general-purpose game engines, especially among indie creators. According to a survey conducted by the Game Developers Conference for this year’s “GDC Festival of Gaming,” Unity had a 30% adoption rate as developers’ primary engine, whereas Godot Engine accounted for 5%. Despite this significant gap, Godot has been steadily growing its user base, with notable titles like Slay the Spire 2 recently adopting it. Consequently, developers are increasingly weighing their options when selecting a game engine for their projects.
With this context in mind, Grové explained that after establishing the core systems for the horror adventure game he’s currently working on, he chose to rebuild the same game in Godot Engine. His objective was to compare the two engines before deciding which one to use for the final development, and he uploaded the video to share his findings.
Due to fundamental differences between the engines, the resulting games were not perfectly identical. However, Grové found that both engines were fully capable of producing the type of game he envisioned. When examining framerates, he noted that while his target was 60fps, both engines achieved framerates well beyond that. Even allowing for future graphical enhancements, he believes both still offer ample performance headroom.
The most notable differences highlighted in the video centered on overall user experience. For one, the storage space needed to install the engines varied greatly. Unity, including Unity Hub and related components, required approximately 21GB of storage, whereas Godot Engine needed only about 164MB, which could be a critical factor for developers with limited storage.
Another key observation was the time needed for script compilation, a task developers perform repeatedly during development. In Grové’s tests, Unity took 15.4 seconds to compile scripts, while Godot Engine completed the process in just 0.31 seconds, representing a substantial difference. This is likely because Unity primarily uses the compiled language C#, whereas Godot employs its interpreted proprietary language GDScript, enabling much faster iteration times. Grové remarked that one of the reasons he initially favored Unity was “how instantly changes were reflected,” expressing disappointment that this has changed over time.
Unity’s performance was also inferior to Godot in both full game build times and game startup times. The disparity was particularly striking for the initial build, with Unity reportedly taking around 15 minutes while Godot finished the process in just 2.5 seconds.
After evaluating the various comparisons, Grové decided to continue developing his game in Godot Engine. The video also explores additional topics, such as differences in the editor interface, the effort required to import 3D models, and the fact that Godot includes all assets in a project by default unless manually adjusted, leading to unnecessarily large file sizes – so be sure to watch the full video on YouTube for more details.
Meanwhile, feedback from fellow developers on Reddit and in the video comments primarily focused on Unity’s lengthy build and iteration times, indicating that many users share similar frustrations. At the same time, some commenters noted that Godot’s performance can decline as projects grow to contain a large number of objects, while others questioned the validity of the comparison methodology itself. Ultimately, the video should be seen as one developer’s personal experience rather than definitive proof. Even so, while Grové’s experiment was quite labor-intensive, it suggests that developers who are undecided may find it beneficial to experiment with both engines themselves.
Currently, as suggested by the earlier GDC 2026 survey results, Unity still appears to offer advantages for developers considering job opportunities and career growth within the industry. However, Godot adoption has continued increasing year by year. According to Godot Foundation engineer Clay John, who spoke to us in February, even large studios are increasingly “switching over” to Godot Engine at key project milestones, so it will be intriguing to observe how developer sentiment evolves moving forward.
Mido