Following are the main differences:

Application: Stand Alone, doesn’t need

web-browser. Applet: Needs no explicit installation on local machine. Can be transferred through Internet on to the local machine and may run as part of web-browser. Application: Execution starts with main() method. Doesn’t work if main is not there. Applet: Execution starts with init() method. Application: May or may not be a GUI. Applet: Must run within a GUI (Using AWT). This is essential feature of applets.