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Apache Flink vs Redpanda comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Flink
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redpanda
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 7.5%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Flink7.5%
Redpanda2.0%
Other90.5%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Sanjay Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Architect at IBM
Streaming workflows have improved data integration and support real-time pipelines across platforms
We are not using Apache Flink in its advanced window capabilities. We are using the Apache Flink job in Apache SeaTunnel, meaning we can write the code inside Apache SeaTunnel. Currently, we are moving; both solutions are there. We are doing it on-premises with the help of Kubernetes and OpenShift. The main reason why Apache Flink is better is that it has more functions, and being open source with easy code in Apache SeaTunnel helps us achieve that. Cost is a major issue. I would rate the stability of the product as an eight. For Apache Flink, the final point can be rated an eight. I can recommend Apache Flink to other users for streaming support, and I am recommending it. I would rate this review an eight overall.
ArpitShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Analyst at CLSA
Event streaming has simplified video data cleanup and now powers real-time analytics
One area for improvement is providing more examples. For instance, Redpanda could be more useful as a sink where you get the data and can directly push to S3. While this is possible through the API, there are better and faster ways to do it. You can make a million API calls and accomplish the task in one and a half hours, but the same thing can be done in ten minutes through other methods. These faster approaches are not documented in obvious places. You have to find information scattered across various blogs. Redpanda should collect all the good blogs and best practices and put them in their documentation. This is more about knowledge management and making it easy for users to understand the product for complex use cases. For simple use cases, it is straightforward. We all use the basic pipe functionality. However, providing more examples would be useful. For example, integration with AWS and the AWS ecosystem would be cool.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Another feature is how Flink handles its radiuses. It has something called the checkpointing concept. You're dealing with billions and billions of requests, so your system is going to fail in large storage systems. Flink handles this by using the concept of checkpointing and savepointing, where they write the aggregated state into some separate storage. So in case of failure, you can basically recall from that state and come back."
"The setup was not too difficult."
"The event processing function is the most useful or the most used function. The filter function and the mapping function are also very useful because we have a lot of data to transform. For example, we store a lot of information about a person, and when we want to retrieve this person's details, we need all the details. In the map function, we can actually map all persons based on their age group. That's why the mapping function is very useful. We can really get a lot of events, and then we keep on doing what we need to do."
"What I appreciate best about Apache Flink is that it's open source and geared towards a distributed stream processing framework."
"Apache Flink's best feature is its data streaming tool."
"The ease of usage, even for complex tasks, stands out."
"The end-to-end latency was drastically reduced, and our capability of handling high throughput has increased by using Flink."
"The top feature of Apache Flink is its low latency for fast, real-time data. Another great feature is the real-time indicators and alerts which make a big difference when it comes to data processing and analysis."
"Redpanda has positively impacted my organization by being easy to implement quickly for use cases such as the implementation of MVPs and PoCs, making scalability, tolerance, and availability very interesting and facilitating the provisioning of infrastructure efficiently."
"I think Redpanda will dominate the market in the future, and it will be a really strong contender regarding streaming and AI."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++, which is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"Aside from its lightweight design, Redpanda is essentially a clone of Kafka with all the good features of Kafka, with the only difference being that Kafka needs too many resources while Redpanda is a very good, lightweight, and very fast database."
"I do want to mention that there was a part of Redpanda where you can configure and create containers with Docker."
"Redpanda has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to move from a batch approach to a more streaming approach for our jobs, which cuts down on our delivery time and allows us to better meet our SLAs for our clients."
"I have seen positive outcomes including improved efficiency, cost savings, and better performance metrics because it is open-source, fast, and good."
"The cost savings have been significant."
 

Cons

"I am using the Python API and I have found the solution to be underdeveloped compared to others. There needs to be better integration with notebooks to allow for more practical development."
"Failure is another area where it is a bit rigid or not that flexible."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"Amazon's CloudFormation templates don't allow for direct deployment in the private subnet."
"Flink has become a lot more stable but the machine learning library is still not very flexible."
"We have a machine learning team that works with Python, but Apache Flink does not have full support for the language."
"There are more libraries that are missing and also maybe more capabilities for machine learning."
"The state maintains checkpoints and they use RocksDB or S3. They are good but sometimes the performance is affected when you use RocksDB for checkpointing."
"For me, I was trying to get a lot of data, but I would only get one day's worth of data, even though I asked how I could increase the retention size."
"We had one incident that we concluded was a case of memory leak."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"I think Redpanda needs to increase the connector options."
"One issue I had with Redpanda was debugging an issue where our API would stall whenever we output to our API, and I was not seeing anything in the logs explaining why it was taking a long time."
"Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good."
"Redpanda is not the best technology available on the market."
"I think Redpanda is overall very good for us, and I am uncertain whether Redpanda can scale to very large companies as we are a medium-sized startup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."
"It's an open source."
"This is an open-source platform that can be used free of charge."
"Apache Flink is open source so we pay no licensing for the use of the software."
"The solution is open-source, which is free."
"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Retailer
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Apache Flink?
Apache could improve Apache Flink by providing more functionality, as they need to fully support data integration. The connectors are still very few for Apache Flink. There is a lack of functionali...
What is your primary use case for Apache Flink?
I am working with Apache Flink, which is the tool we use for data integration. Apache Flink is for data, and we are working on the data integration project, not big data, using Apache Flink and Apa...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Flink?
We are not using Apache Flink in its advanced window capabilities. We are using the Apache Flink job in Apache SeaTunnel, meaning we can write the code inside Apache SeaTunnel. Currently, we are mo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Redpanda, I am exploring the product. If I am convinced about the product and the capabilities, and I am sure I will be because I...
What needs improvement with Redpanda?
Redpanda can be improved in several ways, and the more I experiment with the product, the more limitations I find. I understand that this is about business, and the product should grow, and they ha...
What is your primary use case for Redpanda?
My main use case for Redpanda is primarily for streaming, and I am currently focusing on building data lakehouses because I find them really interesting. Redpanda fits into my data lakehouse setup ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Flink
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LogRhythm, Inc., Inter-American Development Bank, Scientific Technologies Corporation, LotLinx, Inc., Benevity, Inc.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Flink vs. Redpanda and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.