Apache Flink
The most recommended of 3 stream processing frameworks
Open-source engine for real-time stream processing that people use in data stacks. Critics call it slow and costly to operate.
Open-source engine for real-time stream processing that people use in data stacks. Critics call it slow and costly to operate.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 69%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Suited to real-time streaming workloads
“flink which I think was better suited to our actual real-time needs”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “118M Queries per Second on Neki” “Kafka/Debezium/Flink for streaming data”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “A Preview of DuckDB v2.0” Common in streaming data stacks
“I’m happy to see that Flink is in this stack”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “TikTok's 'Addictive Design' Found to Be Illegal in Europe” “Kafka/Debezium/Flink for streaming data”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “A Preview of DuckDB v2.0”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow compared with alternatives
“they were way slower (like 3-5x) than clickhouse”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “650GB of Data (Delta Lake on S3). Polars vs. DuckDB vs. Daft vs. Spark” “Flink is just slow for what it does.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “TikTok's 'Addictive Design' Found to Be Illegal in Europe” “Flink is too slow for this.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “TikTok's 'Addictive Design' Found to Be Illegal in Europe”
Other stream processing frameworks people recommend
The two most recommended other stream processing frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache FlinkThis page | 9 | 4 | 69% | 7 | — | — |
| Feldera | 7 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| Materialize | 5 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
13 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“flink which I think was better suited to our actual real-time needs”
“Kafka/Debezium/Flink for streaming data”
“Large Apache ecosystem (Spark, Flink, Pinot) is completely missing”
“Operational overhead (jobs, state backends, checkpointing)”
“I’m happy to see that Flink is in this stack”
“Flink is not really a performance choice, it's bloat to throw software as fast as possible at problems.”
“Flink is too slow for this.”
“Flink is just slow for what it does.”
“Flink dropped the Scala API before even moving to 2.13.”
“easy-peasy for a single not very big flink cluster”
“Flink should have just been under MSK instead of the confusing mess it has gone through”
“they were way slower (like 3-5x) than clickhouse”
“We used Flink and S3 compatible backends (for the Flink state) to ensure exactly once processing.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.