Servlets are faster as compared to JSP, as they have a short response time. JSP is slower than Servlets, as the first step in the JSP lifecycle is the conversion of JSP to Java code and then the compilation of the code. Servlets are Java-based codes.

Servlet is faster than JSP. JSP is slower than Servlet because first the translation of JSP to java code is taking place and then compiles. Modification in Servlet is a time-consuming task because it includes reloading, recompiling and restarting the server as we made any change in our code to get reflected.

Advantages of JSP over Servlet

• 1) Extension to Servlet. JSP technology is the extension to Servlet technology.
• 2) Easy to maintain.
• 3) Fast Development: No need to recompile and redeploy.
• 4) Less code than Servlet.
• Note: jspInit(), _jspService() and jspDestroy() are the life cycle methods of JSP.

JavaServer Pages often serve the same purpose as programs implemented using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). But JSP offers several advantages in comparison with the CGI. Performance is significantly better because JSP allows embedding Dynamic Elements in HTML Pages itself instead of having separate CGI files.

Disadvantages of JSP

• It is hard to trace JSP pages error because JSP pages are translated to servlet.
• As JSP output is HTML, it is not rich in features.
• It is very hard to debug or trace errors because JSP pages are first translated into servlets before the compilation process.
• Database connectivity is not easy.

Servlets and JSPs are considered outdated technologies and no longer chosen for the new projects. These were found in use significantly for legacy projects. Servlet JSPs were used enormously in around 2000.

JSP provides a dynamic interface for the continuously changing data and also it dynamically invokes the server actions. HTML provides a means to give a detailed account of the structure of text-based information in a document. JSP generated dynamic web pages only. Whereas Html generated static web pages only.

Advantages of JSP

• The advantage of JSP is that the programming language used is JAVA, which is a dynamic language and easily portable to other operating systems.
• It is very much convenient to modify the regular HTML.
• It is only intended for simple inclusions which can use form data and make connections.

Disadvantages of JSP It is hard to trace JSP pages error because JSP pages are translated to servlet. As JSP output is HTML, it is not rich in features. It is very hard to debug or trace errors because JSP pages are first translated into servlets before the compilation process. Database connectivity is not easy.

Advantages of JSP It is only intended for simple inclusions which can use form data and make connections. JSP can also include the database connections into it. It can contain all type of java objects. Performance and scalability of JSP are very good because JSP allows embedding of dynamic elements in HTML pages.

In my experience, JSP is in fact “dead” if compared to JSF and other frameworks like Spring MVC and others. Java EE 7 tutorial barely says anything about JSP. But it is not dead dead, since it is already supported in Web Containers and you can still use it.

Servlet is faster than JSP. JSP is slower than Servlet because the first step in JSP lifecycle is the translation of JSP to java code and then compile. Servlet can accept all protocol requests. JSP only accept http requests. In Servlet, we can override the service () method.

In contrast to MVC we can state servlet as a controller which receives the request process and send back the response. On the other hand, JSP plays the role of view to render the response returned by the servlet.

In JSP session management is automatically enabled. In Servlet we have to implement everything like business logic and presentation logic in just one servlet file. In JSP business logic is separated from presentation logic by using javaBeans.

Here are benefits/ pros of using servlet: Servlet loads only one copy of it into JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It saves time to respond to the first request which increases response time. It uses standard API that is supported by numerous web servers. Programming languages like platform independence and ease of development.