No, you need to use -nw with emacs to make it apples to apples. Then it's emacs 0m0.095s vs nvim 0m0.057s:
$ time nvim -es --cmd 'vim.cmd("q")'
real 0m0.057s
user 0m0.016s
sys 0m0.017s
$ time emacs -Q -e kill-emacs
real 0m0.230s
user 0m0.165s
sys 0m0.064s
$ time emacs -nw -Q -e kill-emacs
real 0m0.095s
user 0m0.057s
sys 0m0.017s
Shouldn't matter when I am not on GUI seat. In my SSH session with X11 forwarding there is no DISPLAY emacs could use.
Tried it anyways, looks the same: