

In Grové’s tests, Unity took 15.4 seconds to compile scripts, while Godot Engine took just 0.31 seconds, which is a significant gap. This is likely due to Unity’s standard use of the compiled language C#, whereas Godot uses its interpreted in-house language GDScript, allowing for much faster iteration times.
Both C# and GDScript are (typically) compiled to bytecode, so they are probably more similar than they are different when it comes to the compilation step. (C# does get compiled to native machine code by the .NET runtime, the GDScript bytecode is likely still running in an optimized interpreter.) There is no excuse why Unity should be taking that long to compile its scripts. Certainly that’s not a failure of the language used.


It’s funny you say that because Unity’s C# tooling is soooo many years behind. They’re still using Mono. (Godot also used it in the past.) And apparently only some time this year (end of 2026?) will they have proper modern C# with all its performance benefits.
edit: Actually I just found this in a related article (unsure about whether it’s slop or not) but apparently the horrible compile times is from something called “Domain Reload” and is caused exactly by that ancient tooling being used.