pragmatic is more formal, academic linguistic. practical is more spoken,colloquial, simple. use often pragmatic definition A pragmatic way of dealing with something is based on practical considerations, rather than theoretical ones. A pragmatic person deals with things in a practical way. Robin took a pragmatic look at her situation. The American people are pragmatic by nature. And skilled, visionary, and yet pragmatic organizations and leaders are at the heart of this effort. He was noted for his pragmatic handling of complex cases. English humor can be discussed by Relevance Theory of pragmatic principles. If used properly, English ambiguity can result in positive pragmatic effect.

They are often synonyms, but they sometimes are not. You can say that a person is practical or pragmatic (i.e., a practical leader/a pragmatic leader). You can say the same about an idea (a practical plan/a pragmatic plan). However, I would probably say that an object is practical but not pragmatic. It just doesn't sound quite right to me to say that something is a "pragmatic tool" or a "pragmatic app", but maybe English speakers in other parts of the world say that? (I am from Philadelphia, USA).

The chief difference that I can think of is that pragmatic is more likely to be used to describe a concept than a person, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule by any means. Very often English vocabulary has a short terse word of Germanic origin and a multisyllabic word that is of a Latin origin that are virtually synonymous. In this case, it seems that practical is a Latin derivative and pragmatic is a Greek one that are more or less synonymous in modern English.