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Case classes in Scala are standard classes enhanced with pattern-matching, equals, ... (or am I wrong?). Moreover they require no "new" keyword for their instanciation. It seems to me that they are simpler to define than regular classes (or am I again wrong?).
There are lots of web pages telling where they should be used (mostly about pattern matchin). But where should they be avoided ? Why don't we use them everywhere ?
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A Scala Case Class is like a regular class, except it is good for modeling immutable data. It also serves useful in pattern matching, such a class has a default apply() method which handles object construction. A scala case class also has all vals, which means they are immutable.
The one of the topmost benefit of Case Class is that Scala Compiler affix a method with the name of the class having identical number of parameters as defined in the class definition, because of that you can create objects of the Case Class even in the absence of the keyword new.
Case classes help us use the power of inheritance to perform pattern matching. The case classes extend a common abstract class. The match expression then evaluates a reference of the abstract class against each pattern expressed by each case class.
A class can extend another class, whereas a case class can not extend another case class (because it would not be possible to correctly implement their equality).
There are many places where case classes are not adequate:
Sometimes these requirements show up late in the design, and requires one to convert a case class into a normal class. Since the benefits of a case class really aren't all that great -- aside from the few special cases they were specially made for -- my own recommendation is not to make anything a case class unless there's a clear use for it.
Or, in other words, do not overdesign.
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