Comparison

Here's a small matrix which should help you choosing the right instance.

In general:

• an Artifact holds a file mapped on a certain coordinate.
• a Dependency contains an artifact and has transitive information
• a MavenProject hold a pom-file and optional mainfile and can have attached (=classified) files, all using the same GAV.

  	Dependency	Artifact	MavenProject
  Has dependencies	yes	no	yes
  filetype reference	type	file-extension	packaging
  version ranges	yes	no	no
  attached artifacts	no	no	yes

This implies the following:

• From dependency to artifact is possible, since you can map a type to an extension. However, it is not possible to go from artifact back to dependency, there are several types which have jar as file extension.
• There's no such thing as transitive artifacts. Filtering during resolution as based on DependencyFilters, ArtifactFilters can only be applied afterwards, hence are less efficient.