Performance comparison of the most popular tween libraries for Unity.

[KyryloKuzyk]

Performance comparison of the most popular tween libraries for Unity.

All benchmarks in this article are performed with the official Performance testing API and can be easily replicated by cloning the Benchmarks repo. For a detailed comparison of PrimeTween vs. DOTween, please visit the dedicated article.

Runtime Performance

Test environment: Unity 2022.3.9, Macbook Pro M1 32GB, IL2CPP build, 100.000 iterations per test, average frame time in milliseconds (lower numbers are better).

	DOTween 1.2.745	LeanTween 2.51	UnityTweens 3.2.0	PrimeTween 1.0.10	PrimeTween vs second best
Animation start	33.54 ms	15.00 ms	43.18 ms	5.76 ms	2.6x
Animation start (all params)	38.01 ms	24.68 ms	39.73 ms	6.72 ms	3.67x
Position animation	8.91 ms	12.54 ms	7.88 ms	4.34 ms	1.82x
Rotation animation	9.74 ms	16.28 ms	9.49 ms	6.79 ms	1.4x
Custom animation	4.93 ms	4.45 ms	4.78 ms	3.28 ms	1.36x
Custom animation curve	12.11 ms	9.90 ms	14.01 ms	4.84 ms	2.04x
Delay	4.17 ms	4.26 ms	1.99 ms	2.07 ms	0.96x
Delay start	15.37 ms	13.07 ms	38.52 ms	7.32 ms	1.79x
Sequence with 3 tweens	9.36 ms	9.49 ms	-	2.83 ms	3.31x
Sequence start	45.59 ms	49963.62 ms	-	8.83 ms	5.16x

GC Memory Allocations

The amount of GCAlloc per one iteration, lower numbers are better.

	DOTween 1.2.745	LeanTween 2.51	UnityTweens 3.2.0	PrimeTween 1.0.10
Animation	734 B	292 B	878 B	0 B
Delay	584 B	146 B	944 B	0 B
Sequence	2846 B	877 B	-	0 B

How to run the benchmarks?

After cloning the Benchmarks repo, open the 'Window/General/Test Runner' and run the tests on the target platform by pressing the 'Run All Tests (TargetPlatform)' button.

This repo has the PRIME_TWEEN_DISABLE_ASSERTIONS define. PrimeTween heavily uses assertions in development builds, and this define will disable them to match the release performance in tests.

Noticed an error in the measurement method? Or have something to add? You are welcome to join the discussion.

[yosun]

niiice! but also curious why yours is slower on delay?

also typo in leantween sequence start?

[KyryloKuzyk]

why yours is slower on delay?

I assume this is because LeanTween has a special treatment of delays, while in PrimeTween delay is just a regular tween with that doesn't animate anything. Writing a custom delay optimization wasn't worth the benefit in my opinion.

typo in leantween sequence start?

Not a typo, LeanTween has O(n^2) complexity in starting sequences. It may be unnoticeable if your project uses a couple of hundreds of sequences, but you should keep the exponential complexity in mind.

[fslse]

About the GC Memory Allocations of DOTween, may I ask if you have enabled the tween recycling option?

[KyryloKuzyk]

About the GC Memory Allocations of DOTween, may I ask if you have enabled the tween recycling option?

Yes, of course! Please see the 'GC Memory Allocations' in this article for more details on the testing methodology around the memory allocation: #8

In short, I tested two most common scenarios: 1) creating the tween reference in OnKill(), and 2) not storing the tween reference at all. The 2) option still allocates 324 B of GC every tween start.

[EnterUserNamePlease]

Hi!
We already have a working prototype of a mobile game where DOTween is used very frequently. I was aware of PrimeTween and planned to replace DOTween with it at the end. Today, I replaced a couple of placements in the game and started profiling to confirm the improvements. But to my surprise, the profiler showed numbers almost twice as bad - operations took twice as long as with DOTween. This is not what I expected! 🙂

To be more specific, I'm moving around 30-40 Transforms with onUpdate and onComplete. I started diving into forums and found a benchmark. I ran the test, and the report also showed that PrimeTween performs worse than DOTween.

Why is this happening, and is it expected behavior? Performance is the main reason for switching, but it turns out that it's not working as intended.
Two reports from two different laptops: