Ant doesn’t have formal conventions, so we need to provide information about the project structure in the build.xml file.
Maven has a convention to place source code, compiled code, etc. So we don’t need to provide information about the project structure in pom.xml file.
Ant is procedural, you need to provide information about what to do and when to do through code. You need to provide order.
Maven is declarative, everything you define in the pom.xml file.
There is no life cycle in Ant.
There is a life cycle in Maven.
Ant is a toolbox.
Maven is a framework.
It is mainly a build tool.
It is mainly a project management tool.
The ant scripts are not reusable.
The maven plugins are reusable.
It is less preferred than Maven.
It is more preferred than Ant.