Difference Between Hosted, Provider Hosted and SharePoint Hosted App

SharePoint Hosted App

• Are hosted on either an on-premises or Office 365 SharePoint farm.
• SharePoint-hosted apps are installed on a SharePoint 2013 website, called the host web.
• They have their resources hosted on an isolated sub-site of a host web, called the app web.
• It’s important to know the difference between host webs and app webs.

Provider hosted apps

• Provider-hosted apps for SharePoint include components that are deployed and hosted outside the SharePoint farm.
• They are installed to the host web, but their remote components are hosted on another server.

Auto hosted apps

• Auto hosted apps for SharePoint are cloud-hosted apps whose remote components are provisioned and deployed for you on Windows Azure.
  
  
• As with a provider-hosted app, an auto-hosted app for SharePoint can interact with a SharePoint website but also uses resources and services that are located on a remote site that is hosted by Windows Azure.
  
  
• The SharePoint 2013 installation provisions and deploys these resources for you.