Apache And Tomcat Difference. Apache maven is a build automation tool for java projects. Tomcat can act as a web server (not as good as apache), but its main purpose is to act as an application server that supports servlets and java server pages.

2 in terms of market share, apache tomcat is clearly lagging behind, losing to apache in all segments. Apache maven is a build automation tool for java projects. Tomcat 8 can use apache portable runtime, which provides better scalability and performance.