We report the studies of luminescence intensity and lifetime dependences on temperature for Nd‐doped GaP and GaAs samples grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. It is found that, with above band‐gap excitation, the temperature dependence of GaP:Nd reveals a two‐step decreasing behavior as the sample temperature increases. This phenomenon is due to the fact that there exist two kinds of Nd centers (type I and type II) in GaP. Although type I Nd centers produce strong luminescence at low temperatures, their intensities drop rapidly above 40 K. On the other hand, type II Nd centers show a near constant intensity up to 150 K and can still be observed up to room temperature. We also found, for a given Nd center, that the luminescence lifetime dependence on temperature is identical to the temperature quenching behavior of luminescence intensity. From the similarity between the quenching behaviors of Nd‐related luminescence intensities and lifetimes, we conclude that the temperature quenching of luminescence intensity of these Nd‐doped GaP and GaAs samples is mainly due to deexcitation rather than the reduction of excitation efficiency.