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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
10th
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
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Server category, the mindshare of Oracle GlassFish is 3.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tomcat is 12.9%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Server Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tomcat12.9%
Oracle GlassFish3.9%
Other83.2%
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

it_user517413 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead Developer
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.
Sanjay Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Capgemini
Customization and flexibility enhance web applications while support effectively resolves queries
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 different, it has everything we have been using, and as of now, everything is good with no deficiencies that need improvement. I think that Tomcat needs a more robust logging error details feature; the current logging feature is available, but it should be more user-friendly. This improvement would make error handling more user-friendly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product offers EE support."
"The products offers EE support."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, where one is high price and ten is low price. The pricing is pretty low."
"Tomcat is reliable and secure, which makes it valuable for our application deployment."
"Tomcat's best feature is the open source server. It's a flexible and lightweight solution."
"The ease of use of Tomcat is its most valuable feature. Once we grade particular software, we simply download it and we keep an eye on if Tomcat is working."
"Tomcat has connectors like REST requests to connect the front end. Also, some parts of the inter-system communication go through REST. External connections with third parties occasionally involve both REST and SOAP protocols. Tomcat is versatile in accommodating these various communication methods."
"The solution is readily available and open-source."
"Tomcat is free and opensource."
"The product is easy to use."
 

Cons

"I would like to see integration with MQ systems."
"I would like to see integration with MQ systems."
"Resource configuration like JNDI and queue configuration, similar to other servers, should be provided from the admin console for Tomcat."
"Vulnerability is one of the areas that can be considered an issue in the solution."
"One way to improve the solution is by making the logging capabilities of Tomcat better by providing a logger within the server itself and making it easy to access and view the server logs. This can be especially useful when debugging issues with applications deployed on the Tomcat server. By having the ability to view both the application logs and the server logs, you can more easily identify the source of any issues and troubleshoot them more efficiently. Providing a connector or other similar feature that allows you to access the server logs from within your application can also be helpful in this regard. Having access to both the application logs and the server logs can be a valuable resource when trying to identify and resolve problems."
"Tomcat lacks a visual tool for configuring."
"Out-of-Memory issues, which can be solved by increasing the heap space."
"The configuration needs work."
"The setup is complex and could be improved."
"Security integration in Tomcat is complicated. We need to use another tool to solve the security issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution is good."
"If it is a community version of the solution, no payment is required. However, if it is a Linux version, we must buy the solution from JBoss."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"Tomcat is open-source and free to use."
"Tomcat is an open-source server."
"We are using the open-source version."
"The solution is free."
"There are no additional costs apart from the standard license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise28
 

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?
Tomcat lacks a visual tool for configuring. Everything is from the command line. I would like a visual tool for configuration to be added to Tomcat, as I see this feature missing.
What is your primary use case for Tomcat?
I work with Tomcat as a programmer, but not as an administrator. My major use case involves using Tomcat, mostly enclosed in any Java image for a Java application for REST API. I do not work with t...
 

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, Red Hat, Oracle and others in Application Server. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.