The main objective of this research is to conduct a comparative analysis of the financial performance of Ethiopian state-owned and private-owned commercial banks from July 2013/14 to June 2019/20. The relevant information was gathered from the banks' audited financial accounts. As a result, the financial performance of Ethiopia's state-owned commercial bank was compared to that of privately owned commercial banks using the CAMEL model's financial performance metrics. The study's population consists of one state-owned and sixteen privately held commercial banks in Ethiopia that are currently operational in 2020. Purposive sampling approaches were used in this research. As a result, the study includes one state-owned commercial bank and thirteen privately held commercial banks. This research study adopts two methods of research design in order to describe the entire financial performance of commercial banks in Ethiopia such as analytical as well as descriptive study. A quantitative research approach has been used to evaluate the financial performance of the two types of banks. The two-sample (independent groups) t-test and Mann-Whitney U test are used to test and assess the two independent samples differ statistically. As per the study from eight financial performance indicators CAR, NPL & EQ ratios didnâ€™t result in statistically significant differences between the subsectors during the studied periods. The remaining financial performance indicators i.e. ROA, ROE, NIM, MAGTQ, and LR result in statistically significant differences in their performance between the state-owned commercial bank and private commercial banks. Therefore it is recommended that Management of State-Owned bank should work on their Asset Management and its utilization which will enhance banks profitability with its total assets. In addition, the state-Owned bank management should further identify the reason why the net interest margin of the bank was lower than of the average industry.