The finalizer method is called when your object is garbage collected and you have no guarantee when this will happen (you can force it, but it will hurt performance).

The Dispose method on the other hand is meant to be called by the code that created your class so that you can clean up and release any resources you have acquired (unmanaged data, database connections, file handles, etc) the moment the code is done with your object.

Finalize is the backstop method, called by the garbage collector when it reclaims an object. Dispose is the “deterministic cleanup” method, called by applications to release valuable native resources (window handles, database connections, etc.) when they are no longer needed, rather than leaving them held indefinitely until the GC gets round to the object.

As the user of an object, you always use Dispose. Finalize is for the GC.

Last modified: March 22, 2019

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