Append simply places the items from one input after the other. It doesn’t try to match or merge records.
Combine is used when you want to join related items together based on their position or matching fields, depending on the mode you’ve selected
If the two inputs are unrelated lists, Append is usually the right choice. If they represent the same records coming from different branches, Combine is generally what you’re looking for
One gotcha that isn’t obvious until it bites you: in Combine → Matching Fields, any item that doesn’t find a match is silently dropped unless you enable Include Unpaired Items. So when your output count is mysteriously smaller than your input count, that’s usually the cause — not a broken lookup upstream.
Append never drops anything, it just stacks. If you only need everything in one stream and don’t care about pairing, Append is the safe default.