Efficiency informs perceptions and expectations of people’s actions from early in life. We examined whether young children aged three and four consider efficiency when evaluating how well agents completed goals. In three experiments, we showed children scenarios where two characters each walked to target objects, and then asked children which character did a better job. In the first experiment, children appeared to consider efficiency. They more often chose a character who took a direct path over one who took an indirect path, but only when the latter character could have taken a shorter path. Two follow-up experiments, though, failed to replicate this pattern and the success in the initial experiment could be explained in terms of the features of the paths (not strictly related to efficiency) used in that experiment. The findings suggest, then, that three- and four-year-olds do not yet use efficiency to normatively evaluate actions. We consider two alternative explanations for this.