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Apache Flink vs Redpanda comparison

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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 October 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 6.9%, down from 14.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Flink6.9%
Redpanda2.1%
Other91.0%
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

"With Flink, it provides out-of-the-box checkpointing and state management. It helps us in that way. When Storm used to restart, sometimes we would lose messages. With Flink, it provides guaranteed message processing, which helped us. It also helped us with maintenance or restarts."
"Apache Flink offers a range of powerful configurations and experiences for development teams. Its strength lies in its development experience and capabilities."
"Flink moved on to becoming a standard technology for location platform."
"What I appreciate best about Apache Flink is that it's open source and geared towards a distributed stream processing framework."
"We value this solution's intricate system because it comes with a state inside the mechanism and product, allowing us to process batch data, stream to real-time and build pipelines, and we do not need to process data from the beginning when we pause as we can continue from the same point where we stopped, helping us save time as 95% of our pipelines will now be on Amazon and we'll save money by saving time."
"The setup was not too difficult."
"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."
"Apache Flink's best feature is its data streaming tool."
"Redpanda is developer-friendly, and we need to do much less configuration because Redpanda provides out-of-the-box configuration for us."
"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."
"The good part about Redpanda is that there is a free part, which is great, and it is embedding most Kafka features so you have a number of features similar to Confluent but for free, which is great."
"I have seen positive outcomes including improved efficiency, cost savings, and better performance metrics because it is open-source, fast, and good."
"Through a lot of benchmarks and whatnot, we found out that on a larger scale, when the latency of the messages is important, not talking about throughput, the latency is important, Redpanda offers a way better latency profile than Apache Kafka."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++, which is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"The performance is superb, and the value we are getting for the money we pay is great."
"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."
 

Cons

"In a future release, they could improve on making the error descriptions more clear."
"PyFlink is not as fully featured as Python itself, so there are some limitations to what you can do with it."
"Failure is another area where it is a bit rigid or not that flexible."
"Apache Flink is very powerful, but it can be challenging for beginners because it requires prior experience with similar tools and technologies, such as Kafka and batch processing."
"In terms of improvement, there should be better reporting. You can integrate with reporting solutions but Flink doesn't offer it themselves."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"Flink has become a lot more stable but the machine learning library is still not very flexible."
"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."
"Redpanda can be improved as the support they provide for BYOC could be better."
"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."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"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."
"We had one incident that we concluded was a case of memory leak."
"One area for improvement is providing more examples."
"Redpanda needs more visibility and primarily greater access to documentation."
"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Retailer
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.