Epic vs Steam: We Tested Which Launcher Is Actually Faster

Ever caught yourself staring at a loading screen, wondering if your game launcher is secretly taking its sweet time? You're not alone. This week, Epic fired a shot on X, saying it had "vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy." Awkward timing, though—Valve dropped a Steam Client update the very same day that "Improved Steam Client startup performance." Naturally, there was only one way to settle this: benchmark both launchers and see whose boots up faster.

The test was simple. Each client was opened from the system tray, and the clock ran until the storefront fully loaded with all images displaying properly. Three runs per launcher, averaged out, on a rig packing an RTX 4070 Super. The results? Steam averaged 9.32 seconds to load, while the Epic Games Launcher clocked in at 5.98 seconds. That's a multi-second win for Epic on this particular machine—though others have shown Steam reaching its library even quicker.

But raw startup speed isn't the whole story. The first thing you notice testing Epic is that closing it is a whole ordeal. Steam lets you click 'Steam' in the top-left corner and hit 'exit'—a quick Task Manager check confirms it's actually gone. Epic? You can click the 'x' or right-click the tray icon and choose 'Close window,' but that doesn't stop it running in the background. In testing, 'end task' had to be used twice because the launcher reopened itself after the first kill.

That quirk aside, Steam still has plenty going for it. The recent Big Art update has given the game library a serious glow-up, and the personal calendar feature has been getting heavy use—Valve's already spotlighted a bunch of upcoming cosy and horror games, much to many a wallet's dismay. Nobody's saying Steam is perfect: local game transfer quirks persist despite claimed fixes, the bouncing logo screensaver is divisive, and the store page can look a little cluttered.

Still, for many players, that cluttered-but-feature-rich vibe beats Epic's more austere look. So Epic may have won the stopwatch test, but the battle for your desktop is about way more than seconds. What do you think—does startup speed actually matter to you, or is it all about the features? Will you be sticking with your launcher of choice?