mvn install vs mvn deploy

The difference between mvn install and mvn deploy is about where your built artifact goes and who can access it. Install copies your JAR or WAR file to your local Maven repository, which is a directory on your machine at tilde slash dot m2 slash repository. This is really useful when you're working on multiple projects locally and one project depends on another. For example, if I'm building an order-service that depends on a common-utils library I'm also developing, I'll run mvn install on common-utils first to put it in my local repo, then when I build order-service it can find common-utils as a dependency right there on my machine. Deploy is different — it uploads your artifact to a remote Maven repository that's shared across your entire team, like Nexus or Artifactory. This is how you make your artifact available to other developers, CI/CD systems, and production environments. Typically deploy happens automatically in your CI/CD pipeline when you merge code. One really important thing that trips up freshers is the word deploy itself. In Maven, deploy doesn't mean deploying your application to a server like Tomcat or Kubernetes. It only means uploading your JAR to a Maven repository. Actually deploying your app to a runtime server is done by completely different tools like Docker, Kubernetes, or deployment scripts. Maven deploy is purely about artifact distribution, not application deployment. Another mistake is running mvn deploy from your local machine during development — you almost never want to do this because it pushes artifacts to the shared repository unnecessarily. Deploy should happen in CI/CD, not on your laptop.