Catching a glimpse of my screen is often a stressful experience for my colleagues. Besides my mess of desktop icons and all the browser tabs I have open at any given time, you don't want to know how many things I have set to launch on startup. Among these are, of course, the Steam and Epic Games Store clients and let me tell ya, not all launchers are created equal.
Earlier this week, Epic shared on X that it had "vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy." On the same day, Valve released a Steam Client update that "Improved Steam Client startup performance." Well, there's only one thing for it: I've got to benchmark these bad boys to determine once and for all whose launcher is actually faster.
For my basic benchmarks, I timed how quickly each client loaded into their respective storefronts (with all images displaying properly) after I opened them from the system tray (for those curious, my rig is this iBuyPower prebuilt with an RTX 4070 Super). I ran three tests on each and then took the average result. The Steam client loaded in 9.32 seconds on average, while the Epic Games Launcher loaded in 5.98 seconds for me.
Others have demonstrated Steam launching into the library in less time, but the Epic launcher is faster by seconds as far as my rig is concerned. That said, Steam remains my client of choice.
For instance, the first thing I noticed during my tests was that one does not simply 'exit' the Epic Games Launcher like you can with Steam. In Valve's client, you click 'Steam' in the top-left corner, then simply select 'exit' from the drop-down menu. A quick check of Task Manager shows it's not secretly running in the background.
It's not as straightforward for Epic. You can either click the 'x' or right-click the icon in your system tray and then select 'Close window'. But for my benchmarks, I opted to 'end task' the Epic launcher each time, as just closing the window doesn't stop it from running in the background. On each of my tests, I had to do this twice as the launcher opened itself after I ended the task the first time.
This small, very specific gripe aside, there are other features on Steam I personally appreciate. The recent Big Art update has really spruced up my game library, and I've been making liberal use of the 'personal calendar' feature (Steam has already spotlighted a number of upcoming cosy and horror games, much to my wallet's chagrin).
As we've seen from my benchmarks, the Steam client is by no means perfect. For instance, Valve keeps saying it has fixed local game transfer quirks, though the experience can still be plenty quirky. I'm also not really a fan of the bouncing logo screensaver, either. And to be fair, even the features I like arguably make the client's store page look a bit cluttered. Still, I generally prefer that mess to the Epic Games Launcher's austere look myself.