| Cache object | Application object |
| It stores the data on server side RAM as well as client side RAM. | It always stores data on the server side RAM. |
| Object maintains the static data as specified by the file dependency. | Object maintains its data till the web application is shut down or Clear() method is called. |
| It can be assigned data from web page and not from Global.asax file. | Its data can be assigned using Global.asax file |
| It is used for performance optimization. | It is not used for performance optimization. |
| The time for the cache can be defined using the Cache.Add() or Cache.Insert()overloaded method. | It has not Timeouts or File Dependencies. |
| The lifetime of cache is throughout the lifetime of an application or is based upon timeouts. | Application variable/object stores an object with a scope of availability of the entire application unless explicitly destroyed. |
| It supports different type of bindings like BasicHttpBinding, WSHttpBinding, WSDualHttpBinding etc. | It can only use SOAP or XML for this. |
| The classes that implement the Idictionary interface can be serialized. | The classes which implement IEnumerable and ICollection interface can be serialized. |
