• XQuery is program driven while XSLT is document-driven.
  • XQuery is declarative while XSLT is functional.
  • XSLT is written in XML while XQuery is not written in XML.
  • XQuery is used only for simple transformations while XSLT is a language that was especially designed to process tree structures.
  • XQuery is not as much powerful and sophisticated as XSLT which is still best to retrieve results in tree structure.
  • XQuery is good to access XML database and extract the necessary XML nodes while XSLT is used to transform XML documents.
  • XQuery is designed for retrieving and interpreting information according to the specification. It is very flexible to query a broad spectrum of XML information sources, like XML databases and XML documents while XSLT is mainly designed for transforming the XML documents.
  • XQuery is considered easier to learn while XSLT is comparatively difficult.
  • XQuery is shorter, faster and more elegant for huge data jobs while XSLT may be difficult to maintain unless you carefully designed your stylesheet.