Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

JBoss vs Tomcat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
JBoss ROI varies; effective for large-scale implementations, but less favorable for smaller or back-office uses with costly licenses.
Sentiment score
8.7
Tomcat delivers quick ROI with minimal investment, offering scalability, ease of deployment, and significant time and cost savings.
This flexibility translates to a lower total cost of ownership.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Users find documentation helpful, with varied support experiences; Red Hat support receives generally positive feedback for reliability.
Sentiment score
6.3
Tomcat's support relies heavily on community and documentation, with limited formal assistance but effective community engagement and consultation services.
We receive support from RDS and Red Hat, and the response time and quality meet our expectations.
They are proactive in looking into the tickets we create in case we have unresolved queries.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
JBoss offers high scalability and flexibility for various organization sizes but may need improved documentation for complex features.
Sentiment score
7.6
Tomcat offers high scalability and adaptability, excelling in cloud environments with positive user feedback on its reliability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
JBoss is stable and reliable, especially in cloud environments, despite occasional issues depending on development and operating systems.
Sentiment score
7.9
Tomcat is stable and reliable for small applications, needing careful configuration and updates for optimal performance with high traffic.
It is quite stable for our needs.
 

Room For Improvement

JBoss requires improvements in customization, documentation, support, automation, integration, stability, compatibility, pricing, and cloud features.
Tomcat struggles with compatibility, scalability, speed, unfriendly interface, high memory use, and needs better security, documentation, and performance.
Making it lighter and more modular would probably be beneficial.
I would like to see improved booting of applications altogether on one page to manage all data instances from one location, similar to an AWS console.
Tomcat needs a more robust logging error details feature; the current logging feature is available, but it should be more user-friendly.
 

Setup Cost

JBoss is affordable and flexible, offering reliable support and cost-effective licensing compared to WebLogic and WebSphere.
Tomcat is cost-effective, open-source, with potential additional costs for licenses and optional paid support services.
JBoss is the cheaper option out of the three when compared to WebSphere and WebLogic.
The price is somewhat high for an enterprise, however, it depends on organizational negotiations.
 

Valuable Features

JBoss provides cost-effective, easy-to-use, scalable, and reliable enterprise solutions with excellent Java integration and strong community support.
Tomcat is popular for its lightweight, high performance, scalability, and open-source compatibility, ideal for Java-based applications.
It allows for simple modification of applications and provides better clustering capabilities.
JBoss is more flexible and keeps up with modern technologies, supporting newer versions of different libraries.
The advantages of Tomcat include its flexibility; we can increase the heap memory and the size of sessions as per our custom needs.
 

Categories and Ranking

JBoss
Ranking in Application Server
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tomcat
Ranking in Application Server
2nd
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 May 2025, in the Application Server category, the mindshare of JBoss is 17.5%, up from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tomcat is 19.9%, down from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

Srinadh  Puli - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation aids installation while management consolidation needs improvement
We are currently using Ansible for Jira installations and all the management tasks. We perform some tasks manually, however, Ansible helps in automating some of these processes I find JBoss to be lightweight and easier to manage compared to WebSphere. It allows for simple modification of…
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Server solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
41%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JBoss?
The product's initial setup phase is easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JBoss?
JBoss is the cheaper option out of the three when compared to WebSphere and WebLogic. Though I haven't done a detailed price comparison, the licensing fee is cheaper, and due to its flexibility, th...
What needs improvement with JBoss?
They are trying to make it less heavyweight since app servers often deliver a lot of functionality. Still, if we aren't leveraging them, they can be too much for certain use cases. Making it lighte...
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?
Resource configuration like JNDI and queue configuration, similar to other servers, should be provided from the admin console for Tomcat. Currently, it is done manually. The server config file must...
What is your primary use case for Tomcat?
I am using the solution at running level three. It is for running web applications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tata Sky, Nissan, Swedish Board of Agriculture, Novamedia, American Product Distributors, Advanced Micro Devices, Emirates Group, E*TRADE
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 JBoss vs. Tomcat and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.