# Apache Flink

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Apache Flink and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Open-source engine for real-time stream processing that people use in data stacks. Critics call it slow and costly to operate.

## Why people recommend it

- Suited to real-time streaming workloads (2 comments): "flink which I think was better suited to our actual real-time needs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665791)) "Kafka/Debezium/Flink for streaming data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338141))
- Common in streaming data stacks (2 comments): "I’m happy to see that Flink is in this stack" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46918424)) "Kafka/Debezium/Flink for streaming data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338141))

## What people warn about

- Slow compared with alternatives (3 comments): "they were way slower (like 3-5x) than clickhouse" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45926420)) "Flink is just slow for what it does." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913592)) "Flink is too slow for this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913740))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Feldera](https://hackerapproved.com/p/feldera.md): 7 recommend
- [Materialize](https://hackerapproved.com/p/materialize.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Apache Flink", https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-flink/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).