Mono runtime
Ranked 8 of 11 language runtimes by recommenders
People recommend Mono for running existing .NET and C# code, including .NET Framework 4.8 apps. Critics say it is slower and less reliable than Microsoft's .NET runtime.
People recommend Mono for running existing .NET and C# code, including .NET Framework 4.8 apps. Critics say it is slower and less reliable than Microsoft's .NET runtime.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast, stable and lean
“I switched to the CLI Mono engine, which is much faster (factor two) and much more stable”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes” “Mono was equally fast as V8 in my measurements but much leaner, and more flexible”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “The Green Side of the Lua” “supports multiple threads and has the higher performance”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “The Green Side of the Lua” Runs .NET Framework and IL code
“It even handles the .NET Framework 4.8 code that I maintain without any issues thanks to Mono.”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10” “My results show that the Mono engine is surprisingly capable when executing pure IL code”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Unity's Mono problem: Why your C# code runs slower than it should” Underrated, long usable on Linux
“Mono was in a usable state on Linux for literal decades before becoming official and integrated into what is core today”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “C# in Unity 2026: Features Most Developers Still Don't Use” “it should probably get a bit more credit”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “The state of SIMD in Rust in 2025”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slower than Microsoft's .NET runtime
“more reliable (and fixable!) and significantly less performant that the Microsoft dotnet runtime”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Orkut.com” “always compare performance to the (very slow) baseline Mono”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Unity's Mono problem: Why your C# code runs slower than it should” Outdated, hacky and incompatible
“A Jurassic GC introduced in Mono, that due to Unity not wanting to pay Xamarin for updates, meant it was mostly frozen”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Watching Go's new garbage collector move through the heap” “not many big IT departments are going to run critical apps on some old unsupported hackjob”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable” “try to use Mono which wasn't fully compatible”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Programming the Commodore 64 with .NET” Heavy dependency, awkward to migrate
“The scripting ending designed around mono doesn't translate as well to CoreCLR”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Unity's Mono problem: Why your C# code runs slower than it should” “it's Mono and a decade or more of the most exciting layer violating crimes you can imagine”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Unity's Mono problem: Why your C# code runs slower than it should” “Mono is a huge dependency which doesn't vibe with the rest of the environment”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “I was on Ubuntu's first design team in 2009 London” - Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Unity's Mono problem: Why your C# code runs slower than it should”
Unity stalled updates, frozen GC
“A Jurassic GC introduced in Mono, that due to Unity not wanting to pay Xamarin for updates, meant it was mostly frozen”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Watching Go's new garbage collector move through the heap” “The problem is called Mono, and Unity's refusal to pay for an update.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “D Programming Language”
Other language runtimes people recommend
The four most recommended other language runtimes, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .NET | 293 | 148 | 66% | 12 | 10 yrs28 owners | — |
| BEAM (Erlang VM) | 80 | 25 | 76% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Java Virtual Machine | 42 | 23 | 65% | 12 | — | — |
| JVM | 39 | 22 | 64% | 11 | — | — |
| Mono runtimeThis page | 10 | 15 | 40% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
30 of the 32 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“more reliable (and fixable!) and significantly less performant that the Microsoft dotnet runtime”
“Mono is a huge dependency which doesn't vibe with the rest of the environment”
“A Jurassic GC introduced in Mono, that due to Unity not wanting to pay Xamarin for updates, meant it was mostly frozen”
“Mono was equally fast as V8 in my measurements but much leaner, and more flexible”
“supports multiple threads and has the higher performance”
“It did have a JIT, it just wasn't a very performant one.”
“10x reduction in performance on the same hardware.”
“they managed to stick with MonoRuntime and Burst, kind of made more harm than good”
“Mono was in a usable state on Linux for literal decades before becoming official and integrated into what is core today”
“I depise OpenJDK/Mono because of patents but at least they come with complete defaults”
“Running .NET code on Linux servers under Mono that never actually worked?”
“The Mono runtime is only equivalent to .NET Framework 4.8”
“Mono is bad compared to upstream .NET”
“leave behind Mono's quirky AOT on iOS”
“The problem is called Mono, and Unity's refusal to pay for an update.”
“not many big IT departments are going to run critical apps on some old unsupported hackjob”
“mono is pretty much trash”
“For now, we are accepting the Mono tax to be more productive.”
“making Mono builds obsolete”
“My results show that the Mono engine is surprisingly capable when executing pure IL code”
“it's Mono and a decade or more of the most exciting layer violating crimes you can imagine”
“always compare performance to the (very slow) baseline Mono”
“The scripting ending designed around mono doesn't translate as well to CoreCLR”
“I switched to the CLI Mono engine, which is much faster (factor two) and much more stable”
“Mono -> C# road building path”
“try to use Mono which wasn't fully compatible”
“Microsoft bought Mono/Xamarin and that also sort of works.”
“It even handles the .NET Framework 4.8 code that I maintain without any issues thanks to Mono.”
“it should probably get a bit more credit”
“it's nowhere near as capable as CoreCLR”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.