Difference between List and Set in Java Collection

1) Fundamental difference between List and Set in Java is  allowing duplicate elements. List in Java allows duplicates while  Set doesn't allow any duplicate. If you insert duplicate in Set it will replace the older value. Any implementation of Set in Java will only contains unique elements.

2) Another significant difference between List and Set in Java is order.  List is an Ordered Collection while Set is an unordered Collection. List maintains  insertion order of elements, means any element which is inserted before will go on lower index than any element which is inserted after. Set in Java doesn't  maintain any order. Though Set provide another alternative called SortedSet which can store Set elements in specific Sorting order defined by Comparable and Comparator methods of Objects stored in Set.

3) Set uses equals() method to check uniqueness of elements stored in Set, while SortedSet uses compareTo() method to implement natural sorting order of elements. In order for an element to behave properly in Set and SortedSet, equals() and compareTo() must consistent to each other.

4) Popular implementation of List interface in Java includes ArrayList, Vector and LinkedList. While popular implementation of Set interface includes HashSet, TreeSet and LinkedHashSet.