Ant and Maven both are build tools provided by Apache. The main purpose of these technologies is to ease the build process of a project.
ANT:
* ANT has no formal conventions, so information is to be provided in the build.xml file.
* ANT is procedural.
* ANT is a tool box.
* ANT has no life cycle.
* ANT scripts are not reusable.
* ANT is specifically a build tool.
* ANT is less preferred than Maven.
Maven :
* Maven has conventions, so information is not to be provided in the pom.xml file.
* Maven is declarative.
* Maven is a framework.
* Maven has a life cycle.
* Maven is mainly used as a project management tool.
* Maven plugins are reusable.
* Maven is more preferred than Ant.
