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Oracle GlassFish vs Tomcat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle GlassFish
Ranking in Application Server
9th
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tomcat
Ranking in Application Server
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Server category, the mindshare of Oracle GlassFish is 2.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tomcat is 18.8%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

it_user517413 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers EE Support. I would like to see integration with MQ systems.
The products offers EE support. It offers ease of use. I would like to see integration with MQ systems.
Erick  Karanja - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers high availability, straightforward deployment and easy to use
Tomcat could be a little bit more innovative. Tomcat could come up with a framework that's more lightweight and purely targeted at Java applications. Some other solutions are doing better right now, maybe because they have come up with MicroProfile, which I think is moving forward. It may actually beat Tomcat because of the lightweight nature of the framework, the MicroProfile. They're coming up with new solutions. So, for the future of Tomcat and to maintain the market share they might be looking for, they need to come up with initiatives to ensure that several of us have a lightweight framework to deploy applications on.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The products offers EE support."
"The product is easy to use."
"The solution is convenient. It is a comfortable and easy-to-use solution for my use cases."
"The solution has very robust functionality."
"I find the quick startup valuable, particularly the static quick startup."
"It is a robust solution."
"The solution integrates smoothly with the development environment. The integration process is straightforward. You only need to configure the project in your IDE. With intelligent features, the integration becomes even easier. Once integrated, deployment into our application is straightforward. Previously, we sometimes relied on manual deployment processes or used a separate application manager. However, with this solution, deployment is simplified."
"It is a scalable platform."
"Web apps are very easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"I would like to see integration with MQ systems."
"The high availability is not as robust as the competition is such as WebLogic and Jboss."
"The current procedure appears complex and could benefit from a more straightforward solution."
"If it could support the driver's VIN, they can run natively without the GBM. Now, we can run what we call the native cloud application that doesn't require GBM. If Tomcat can support that, it's going to improve performance and backup."
"If Apache can come up with a better solution to provide better security, that would be ideal."
"I would personally like it if the admin console would show more information specifically about memory being used."
"Deployment in Tomcat should be done through a GUI. We deploy applications from the backend using commands."
"Resource configuration like JNDI and queue configuration, similar to other servers, should be provided from the admin console for Tomcat."
"Tomcat is not user-friendly. I would also like to be able to have multiple applications run at the same time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Tomcat's pricing is very cheap."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"It is an open-source tool and is free of cost."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"We are using the open-source version."
"Tomcat is an open-source server."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
27%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Tomcat?
Tomcat's ease of use has positively impacted project timelines. Tomcat already has high availability – it doesn't go down so often and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. As long as your applicat...
What needs improvement with Tomcat?
Regarding improvements in Tomcat, I personally haven't used it very extensively, but all Apache products are very useful for our web applications. Although the web server setup is a little differen...
What is your primary use case for Tomcat?
We use Tomcat for various purposes, and our company finds it to be perfect; we are getting all the solutions out of that. There is still no chance of any migration to any other technology, but addi...
 

Also Known As

GlassFish
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TravelMuse, Clarity Accounting
1. Adobe Systems 2. Amazon 3. Apple 4. AT&T 5. Bank of America 6. Boeing 7. Cisco Systems 8. Citigroup 9. Dell 10. eBay 11. Facebook 12. General Electric 13. Google 14. Hewlett-Packard 15. IBM 16. Intel 17. JPMorgan Chase 18. Microsoft 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Salesforce 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. Target 26. Twitter 27. Uber 28. Verizon 29. Visa 30. Volkswagen 31. Walmart 32. Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache, Oracle, Red Hat and others in Application Server. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.