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Apache Flink vs Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Kafka on Confluent C...
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 6.7%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Flink6.7%
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud1.3%
Other92.0%
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.
AF
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has unified log streams from multiple systems and accelerated issue tracking through streamlined setup
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to detect if there is any variable or if there is any data structure that is mismatched, as it would be easier than us manually having to put in the exact name in order for it to match the response. Regarding additional improvements, I would say probably around error handling, where when we encounter errors specific to our response structures and everything, or the tables or anything of that nature, it would be better if we were prompted with better error handling mechanisms. I do not think there are any other improvements Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud needs, aside from error handling and response structures.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Among all of this, if I would talk about streaming, Apache Flink wins hands down, but there are other products like Apache Pulsar which I have no idea."
"The documentation is very good."
"Apache Flink is meant for low latency applications. You take one event opposite if you want to maintain a certain state. When another event comes and you want to associate those events together, in-memory state management was a key feature for us."
"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 allows you to reduce latency and process data in real-time, making it ideal for such scenarios."
"It is user-friendly and the reporting is good."
"What I appreciate best about Apache Flink is that it's open source and geared towards a distributed stream processing framework."
"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."
"Kafka provides handy properties that allow us to directly configure the data, whether to keep it or discard it after use."
"The benefits that I have seen from having a real-time architecture include better velocity for developers; instead of developing many of those capabilities in each team, we can rely on Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud to provide those functionalities we want, and the teams can focus on their own business instead of providing all sorts of APIs and dependencies to other domains, allowing everyone to run faster."
"Overall, I think it's a good experience. Apache Kafka can be quite complex and difficult to maintain on your own, so using Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud makes it much easier to use it without worrying about setup and maintenance."
"Kafka and Confluent Cloud have proven to be cost-effective, especially when compared to other tools. In a recent BI integration program over the past year, we assessed multiple use cases spanning ship-to-shore and various Azure integrations. Our findings revealed that Confluent Kafka performed exceptionally well, standing out alongside Genesys and Azure Event Hubs. While these three are top contenders, the choice among other tools depends on the specific use case and project requirements. The customer initially used tools like SMQs, FITRA, and Stream for real-time data processing. However, after our recommendation, Confluent Cloud proved to be a superior choice, capable of replacing these three tools and simplifying their data infrastructure. This shift to a single tool, Confluent Cloud, streamlined their operations, making maintenance and management more efficient for their internal projects."
"Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is critical infrastructure for us; without it, our infrastructure costs would increase significantly, potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and its real-time capabilities accelerate speed to value and enable new use cases, providing significant business value."
"Confluent helped me to streamline all those logs into one place, and then I was consuming those logs that were produced, which made it very much easier because I know Kafka and using Confluent made it much simpler."
"The state-saving feature is very much appreciated. It allows me to rewind a certain process if I see an error and then reprocess it."
"It's very fast and helps us to create the project, guarantee the message delivery, and the performance."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, there should be better reporting. You can integrate with reporting solutions but Flink doesn't offer it themselves."
"Amazon's CloudFormation templates don't allow for direct deployment in the private subnet."
"In terms of stability with Flink, it is something that you have to deal with every time. Stability is the number one problem that we have seen with Flink, and it really depends on the kind of problem that you're trying to solve."
"One way to improve Flink would be to enhance integration between different ecosystems. For example, there could be more integration with other big data vendors and platforms similar in scope to how Apache Flink works with Cloudera. Apache Flink is a part of the same ecosystem as Cloudera, and for batch processing it's actually very useful but for real-time processing there could be more development with regards to the big data capabilities amongst the various ecosystems out there."
"Apache should provide more examples and sample code related to streaming to help me better adapt and utilize the tool."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"There is a learning curve. It takes time to learn."
"The TimeWindow feature is a bit tricky. The timing of the content and the windowing is a bit changed in 1.11. They have introduced watermarks. A watermark is basically associating every data with a timestamp. The timestamp could be anything, and we can provide the timestamp. So, whenever I receive a tweet, I can actually assign a timestamp, like what time did I get that tweet. The watermark helps us to uniquely identify the data. Watermarks are tricky if you use multiple events in the pipeline. For example, you have three resources from different locations, and you want to combine all those inputs and also perform some kind of logic. When you have more than one input screen and you want to collect all the information together, you have to apply TimeWindow all. That means that all the events from the upstream or from the up sources should be in that TimeWindow, and they were coming back. Internally, it is a batch of events that may be getting collected every five minutes or whatever timing is given. Sometimes, the use case for TimeWindow is a bit tricky. It depends on the application as well as on how people have given this TimeWindow. This kind of documentation is not updated. Even the test case documentation is a bit wrong. It doesn't work. Flink has updated the version of Apache Flink, but they have not updated the testing documentation. Therefore, I have to manually understand it. We have also been exploring failure handling. I was looking into changelogs for which they have posted the future plans and what are they going to deliver. We have two concerns regarding this, which have been noted down. I hope in the future that they will provide this functionality. Integration of Apache Flink with other metric services or failure handling data tools needs some kind of update or its in-depth knowledge is required in the documentation. We have a use case where we want to actually analyze or get analytics about how much data we process and how many failures we have. For that, we need to use Tomcat, which is an analytics tool for implementing counters. We can manage reports in the analyzer. This kind of integration is pretty much straightforward. They say that people must be well familiar with all the things before using this type of integration. They have given this complete file, which you can update, but it took some time. There is a learning curve with it, which consumed a lot of time. It is evolving to a newer version, but the documentation is not demonstrating that update. The documentation is not well incorporated. Hopefully, these things will get resolved now that they are implementing it. Failure is another area where it is a bit rigid or not that flexible. We never use this for scaling because complexity is very high in case of a failure. Processing and providing the scaled data back to Apache Flink is a bit challenging. They have this concept of offsetting, which could be simplified."
"Regarding real-time data usage, there were challenges with CDC (Change Data Capture) integrations. Specifically, with PyTRAN, we encountered difficulties. We recommended using our on-premises Kaspersky as an alternative to PyTRAN for that specific use case due to issues with CDC store configuration and log reading challenges with the iton components."
"Some areas for improvement in Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud include issues faced during migration with Kubernetes pods."
"Although, specifically with Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud, it was a bit more challenging to increase adoption because it's very expensive."
"The administration port could be more extensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Improvement can be made by making it easier to build applications on the real-time stream, focusing on real-time pre-processing and anomaly detection."
"Maybe in terms of Apache Kafka's integration with other Microsoft tools, our company faced some challenges."
"There's one thing that's a common use case, but I don't know why it's not covered in Kafka. When a message comes in, and another message with the same key arrives, the first version should be deleted automatically."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 an open source."
"This is an open-source platform that can be used free of charge."
"I consider that the product's price falls under the middle range category."
"I think the pricing is fair, but Confluent requires a little bit more thinking because the price can go up really quickly when it comes to premium connectors."
"Regarding pricing, Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is not a cheap tool. The right use case would justify the cost. It might make sense if you have a high volume of data that you can leverage to generate value for the business. But if you don't have those requirements, there are likely cheaper solutions you could use instead."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Retailer
15%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

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 needs improvement with Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to...
What is your primary use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I have used Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud for one of my projects with regard to log monitoring. My main use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud in that project was mainly streaming of the lo...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
My advice to others looking into using Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is that it is easier and has a low learning curve. If there is any use case regarding streaming, I would suggest starting off ...
 

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. Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.