What is difference between Server.Transfer and Response.Redirect ?

Transfer and Response.Redirect in ASP.NET applications. Redirect and Transfer both cause a new page to be processed, but the interaction between the client (web browser) and server (ASP.NET) is different in each situation.



Response.Redirect involves a roundtrip to the server whereas Server.Transfer conserves server resources by avoiding the roundtrip. It just changes the focus of the webserver to a different page and transfers the page processing to a different page.



Roundtrip means in case of Response.Redirect it first sends the request for the new page to the browser then browser sends the request for the new page to the webserver then after your page changes But in case of Server.Transfer it directly communicate with the server to change the page hence it saves a roundtrip in the whole process.



If you are using Server.Transfer then you can directly access the values, controls and properties of the previous page which you can't do with Response.Redirect.



Response.Redirect changes the URL in the browser's address bar. So they can be bookmarked. Whereas Server.Transfer retains the original URL in the browser's address bar. It just replaces the contents of the previous page with the new one.



Response.Redirect can be used for both .aspx and html pages whereas Server.Transfer can be used only for .aspx pages and is specific to ASP and ASP.NET.



Response.Redirect can be used to redirect a user to an external websites. Server.Transfer can be used only on sites running on the same server. You cannot use Server.Transfer to redirect the user to a page running on a different server.