What will happen if you call an @Async method from a non-annotated method within the same bean?

If you call a method annotated with @Async from another method within the same bean that is not annotated, the asynchrony will not work.

The reason is that Spring uses proxies to implement @Async. When calling a method within the same class, the call is direct, bypassing the proxy, and the annotation is ignored.

As a result, the method will execute synchronously in the same thread.

For @Async to work, the call must come from outside through a proxy, for example, from another bean or via the ApplicationContext.

Example:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @Async
    public void asyncMethod() {
        // executes asynchronously
    }

    public void syncMethod() {
        asyncMethod(); // call within the class — will be synchronous
    }
}

To fix this, you can:

• Move asyncMethod to another bean and call it from there.
• Use ApplicationContext to get the proxy and call the method through it.
• Or use @EnableAsync(proxyTargetClass=true) and CGLIB proxies, but calls within the class still won't be proxied.