One big difference not mentioned in the article, but which influences the choice of when to use which, is that autostats do not apply to table variables, but do apply to temp tables. This means that for temp tables, a lot of time can be spent creating statistics, which may or may not be valuable. On the flip side you save that time with table variables, but the same argument applies -- if they were needed you're in trouble, if not you're in better shape. I tend to favor table variables over temp tables A) for smaller sets of data (2-3 data pages, max), a B) for situations in which I'm defining a PK on the table on doing all joins on that key. In the former situation I don't care as much about plan choice because the table is tiny, and in the latter situation statistics generally won't influence plan choice and so are not as necessary.