Uncoupling algorithms transform a linear differential system of first order into one or several scalar differential equations. We examine two approaches to uncoupling: the cyclic-vector method (CVM) and the Danilevski-Barkatou-Zürcher algorithm (DBZ). We give tight size bounds on the scalar equations produced by CVM, and design a fast variant of CVM whose complexity is quasi-optimal with respect to the output size. We exhibit a strong structural link between CVM and DBZ enabling to show that, in the generic case, DBZ has polynomial complexity and that it produces a single equation, strongly related to the output of CVM. We prove that algorithm DBZ is slower than CVM by at least two orders of magnitude, and provide experimental results that validate the theoretical complexity analyses.