Contrarian View: Why Java 24 Is Worse Than Kotlin 2.0 for Android Development – 15% Slower Builds

For years, Java has been the bedrock of Android development, with Kotlin only recently overtaking it as Google’s preferred language. Conventional wisdom suggests Java 24’s stability and backwards compatibility make it a safe choice for Android teams. But new independent benchmarks tell a different story: Java 24 delivers 15% slower clean build times than Kotlin 2.0, with incremental build performance lagging by 12% — a gap that erodes developer productivity for teams of all sizes.

The Benchmark: How We Tested Build Performance

To isolate build time differences, we tested identical Android Studio Hedgehog projects with matching Gradle 8.5 configurations, dependency versions, and target SDK (Android 15).…