Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun under the Java Community Process.

Apache Tomcat is developed in an open and participatory environment and released under the Apache Software License. Apache Tomcat is intended to be a collaboration of the best-of-breed developers from around the world. We invite you to participate in this open development project. To learn more about getting involved, click here.

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations. Some of these users and their stories are listed on the PoweredBy wiki page.

For the impatient, current Apache Tomcat production quality releases vs. Servlet/JSP specifications:

Servlet/JSP Spec	Apache Tomcat version
2.5/2.1	6.0.13
2.4/2.0	5.5.23
2.3/1.2	4.1.36
2.2/1.1	3.3.2

To help you determine which release is right for you, the releases are described in more detail.

Please note that alhough we offer downloads and documentation of older releases, such as Apache Tomcat 3.x and 4.x, we strongly encourage users to use the latest stable version of Apache Tomcat whenever possible. We recognize that upgrading across major version may not be a trivial task, and some support is still offered on the mailing list for users of old versions. However, because of the community-driven support approach, the older your version the less people would be interested or able to support you.