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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 September 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 7.0%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Flink7.0%
Redpanda2.0%
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is user-friendly and the reporting is good."
"Flink moved on to becoming a standard technology for location platform."
"Easy to deploy and manage."
"Apache Flink allows you to reduce latency and process data in real-time, making it ideal for such scenarios."
"Apache Flink provides faster and low-cost investment for me; I find it to have low hardware requirements, and it's faster with low code, meaning it's easy to understand for moving the streaming data."
"Redpanda has positively impacted my organization because the process is now easy and we have not used another streaming platform for comparison, but it has been better than Kafka."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++, which is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"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."
"Redpanda is developer-friendly, and we need to do much less configuration because Redpanda provides out-of-the-box configuration for us."
"I think Redpanda will dominate the market in the future, and it will be a really strong contender regarding streaming and AI."
"Redpanda was simple and fast, so we went with Redpanda and it just works."
"I would recommend Redpanda to others because it's easy to set up, consumes less resources, and is stable compared to other tools."
"The performance is superb, and the value we are getting for the money we pay is great."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"Apache Flink's documentation should be available in more languages."
"The technical support from Apache is not good; support needs to be improved. I would rate them from one to ten as not good."
"In a future release, they could improve on making the error descriptions more clear."
"There is room for improvement in the initial setup process."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"PyFlink is not as fully featured as Python itself, so there are some limitations to what you can do with it."
"Redpanda is not the best technology available on the market."
"One area for improvement is providing more examples."
"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 can be improved as the support they provide for BYOC could be better."
"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."
"I think Redpanda needs to increase the connector options."
"In Redpanda, the areas that have room for improvement are in the clustering part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's an open-source solution."
"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
17%
Retailer
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
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.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.