The two are different. less is a non-standard pager ( more is the standard one), used for viewing text, while cat is a standard utility, used for concatenating any type and number of data streams into one. They might appear to do the same thing under some circumstances, but then again, so does other utilities.

What is the difference between the cat and less command?

Less is a file reading program, and Cat is a string manipulation program. Less is a dedicated file reader that reads a file one screen at a time, and loads more of the file as you scroll through it.

What is the difference between cat and more command in Linux?

Answer: cat command will dump the entire content of a file on the screen whereas more command will display content that would fit your screen and you can press enter to see rest of the content line by line.