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Java will use as much memory as you give it. Higher heap size is better for performance up to around 32GB. For most Java apps you can limit heap to 256M or less with little consequence.

AFAIK Java uses less ram than Python and JavaScript, only common languages that beat it are Golang and C/C++

And memory used will be hopefully quite lower with value types, coming sometime in the future:

http://www.jesperdj.com/2015/10/04/project-valhalla-value-ty...

Apparently lack of memory isn't something that affects Electron popularity.

Java applications use much less memory, unless their coders weren't paying attention during algorithms and datastructures lectures.

I used Swing Java applications on a computer with 512 MB RAM. Sure, Java eats more than C++, but it should be pretty in line with JavaScript which is a very popular choice nowadays.

Default heap size is over-generous in most JVM implementations, experimenting with smaller settings is the solution.