Spring recommends that you only annotate concrete classes (and methods of concrete classes) with the @Cache* annotation, as opposed to annotating interfaces. You certainly can place the @Cache* annotation on an interface (or an interface method), but this works only as you would expect it to if you are using interface-based proxies. The fact that Java annotations are not inherited from interfaces means that if you are using class-based proxies ( proxy-target-class="true") or the weaving-based aspect ( mode="aspectj"), then the caching settings are not recognized by the proxying and weaving infrastructure, and the object will not be wrapped in a caching proxy, which would be decidedly bad.