Gradle vs Apache Maven: What are the differences?

Gradle: A powerful build system for the JVM. Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites; Apache Maven: Apache build manager for Java projects. Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Gradle and Apache Maven can be primarily classified as "Java Build" tools.

Some of the features offered by Gradle are:

• Declarative builds and build-by-convention
• Language for dependency based programming
• Structure your build

On the other hand, Apache Maven provides the following key features:

• Simple project setup that follows best practices - get a new project or module started in seconds
• Consistent usage across all projects means no ramp up time for new developers coming onto a project
• Superior dependency management including automatic updating, dependency closures (also known as transitive dependencies)

"Flexibility" is the primary reason why developers consider Gradle over the competitors, whereas "Dependency management" was stated as the key factor in picking Apache Maven.

Gradle and Apache Maven are both open source tools. It seems that Gradle with 9.23K GitHub stars and 2.7K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Apache Maven with 1.74K GitHub stars and 1.28K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Gradle has a broader approval, being mentioned in 465 company stacks & 360 developers stacks; compared to Apache Maven, which is listed in 305 company stacks and 142 developer stacks.