Git vs Perforce for Unreal and Unity projects

If you are starting a project or collaborating on an Unreal, Unity, or another game engine, it is recommended that you use version control. Working from a Dropbox or other shared server can cause problems due to the nature of instant syncing cloud storage. In software development, game development, AR/VR projects or virtual production, the two most popular systems are Perforce and Git. A version control system is the foundation of your pipeline, and this article will help you decide which one is best for you.

Disclaimer: Our Anchorpoint app is developed as a Git-based solution, but we will do our best to remain objective.

Both are equally great. Perforce is known for its great scalability and binary support, while Git had a reputation for failing at both, but with features like Git LFS and sparse checkout, you can work with terabyte-sized Git repositories  on a self-hosted GitLab server. Even more, with Git LFS, Git behaves like a centralized version control system. There is no need to keep all your version history files on your local machine. 

File locking

Again, both are equal. Perforce comes with an exclusive checkout that locks files to prevent conflicts. Git LFS has a file locking system that can work in many cases, but it’s not as easy to handle as the one from Perforce. 

To bring up Anchorpoint here, it uses its own file locking system, which is more responsive than the one provided by Git LFS.

Popularity

Perforce is the industry standard for AAA development. It has been around for years. Git has only ever been a good choice for indie developers at first, being used by 93% of developers according to a survey by STACK OVERFLOW. With the recent changes made to Git over the last few years, it has the technical potential to be used for AAA development as well.

Access controls

Perforce does a better job here. You can set granular access controls at the folder or file level. This is not possible with Git. You can only grant access at the repository level, which means you have to split your project into multiple repositories and use submodules.

Ecosystem and community

Git has by far the larger ecosystem due to it's open source nature. ChatGPT and Google work well and there are large communities because it is the most popular version control system for developers.

Developer experience

When it comes to developer experience, we look at features that make it easier for a developer to write code. Because Git has the larger ecosystem, it has the widest variety of tools like merge and diff tools. Every IDE has built-in Git integration. Every CI/CD system supports Git out of the box. It's the most popular version control system for developers for a reason.

Cloud hosting

Git offers a wide range of plug-and-play hosting options, including GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket, as well as smaller providers. Additionally, you can self-host Git servers using solutions like GitLab or Gitea. With Perforce, self-hosting a server is the most common approach, although cloud hosting is available through Perforce itself or via Assembla for dedicated hosted services.

Costs

Git is open source and free by default. But in a normal production environment you will pay for cloud hosting and in many cases for a desktop application. As of today (2025), there are over 36 (free and paid) currently available for Git. Anchorpoint is one of them, optimized for binaries using LFS. An Anchorpoint license starts at $20 per user per month plus cloud storage fees.

Perforce has it's price. It's free for up to 5 users plus self-hosting fees at your choice of provider. Their Helix Core Cloud product, which is a cloud solution from Perforce, costs $39 per user per month plus cloud storage fees.

Speed

Since Git can work offline, it generally delivers better performance than Perforce, especially for tasks like branching or checking out files. Committing in Git is particularly faster because files are stored locally before being pushed (uploaded) in the background. In contrast, Perforce requires every operation to be synchronized with the server.

Asset Management

Perforce comes with HelixDam, which is fully integrated into the ecosystem, including AI-driven tagging and previewing, but comes at a high price.

Some of the Git-based solutions, such our app Anchorpoint, include asset management in the main package. In the case of Anchorpoint, it comes with tagging, file thumbnails, previews, and even a comment/feedback feature for each asset preview window.

Workflow

A basic Git workflow includes these steps

1. Download the latest versions of all the files
2. Do your work
3. Publish your files

Anchorpoint essentially reduces the Git workflow to two buttons (download and publish). The command line or other Git applications add more steps and granular control for developers.

Perforce works at the file level rather than the project level. In Git, a version of a project (called a commit) contains multiple files. Perforce focuses on selecting only the files you want to change. However, it is recommended that you always download all new file versions when working on a project.

1. Select the files you want to commit.
2. Do the work
3. Publish your files

Summary

Both get the job done when it comes to game development, and as a true version control solution they are much more powerful than a Dropbox. Git does better in terms of performance and feature richness due to industry adoption. Perforce is better in terms of access control.

For small to medium teams, we recommend Git-based solutions like our Anchorpoint app, but for large studios, Perforce can be a better solution because of its access control and because it is optimized for handling large game assets like textures, models, and animations, making it popular with AAA studios.

About Git

Git is a widely used open source version control system, particularly popular with game developers. Its popularity is largely due to GitHub, a cloud-based platform for storing and managing source code using Git. As a distributed version control system, Git allows users to maintain an identical copy of repository files both on their local machine and on the server. Linus Torvalds introduced Git in 2005 to facilitate the development of the Linux kernel.

About Perforce

Perforce is a proprietary version control system widely used in the AAA game development industry. Unlike Git, it operates on a centralized model, requiring a constant connection to the server. First introduced in 1995, a decade before Git, Perforce is developed and distributed by Perforce Software, which also offers project and asset management solutions in addition to its version control system.

References

Assembla pricing: https://get.assembla.com/pricing-perforce-cloud/

Azure DevOps pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/devops/azure-devops-services/

Anchorpoint pricing: https://www.anchorpoint.app/pricing

Google trends https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=all&q=git,perforce

Helix Core Cloud pricing: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/perforce-hcc.perforce-helix-core-cloud?ocid=web-hcc&tab=PlansAndPrice