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Apache Flink vs Apache Spark Streaming comparison

 

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
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 13.2%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
A great solution with an intricate system and allows for batch data processing
We value this solution's intricate system because it comes with a state inside the mechanism and product. The system allows us to process batch data, stream to real-time and build pipelines. Additionally, we do not need to process data from the beginning when we pause, and we can continue from the same point where we stopped. It helps us save time as 95% of our pipelines will now be on Amazon, and we'll save money by saving time.
AbhishekGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy integration, beneficial auto-scaling, and good open-sourced support community
The service structure of Apache Spark Streaming can improve. There are a lot of issues with memory management and latency. There is no real-time analytics. We recommend it for the use cases where there is a five-second latency, but not for a millisecond, an IOT-based, or the detection anomaly-based. Flink as a service is much better. Apache Spark Streaming does not have auto-tuning. A customer needs to invest a lot, in terms of management and maintenance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The event processing function is the most useful or the most used function. The filter function and the mapping function are also very useful because we have a lot of data to transform. For example, we store a lot of information about a person, and when we want to retrieve this person's details, we need all the details. In the map function, we can actually map all persons based on their age group. That's why the mapping function is very useful. We can really get a lot of events, and then we keep on doing what we need to do."
"Apache Flink offers a range of powerful configurations and experiences for development teams. Its strength lies in its development experience and capabilities."
"Easy to deploy and manage."
"It is user-friendly and the reporting is good."
"This is truly a real-time solution."
"The documentation is very good."
"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 provides us the flexibility to deploy it on any cluster without being constrained by cloud-based limitations."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"Apache Spark Streaming has features like checkpointing and Streaming API that are useful."
"Apache Spark's capabilities for machine learning are quite extensive and can be used in a low-code way."
"As an open-source solution, using it is basically free."
"Spark Streaming is critical, quite stable, full-featured, and scalable."
"The solution is better than average and some of the valuable features include efficiency and stability."
"Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows."
"It's the fastest solution on the market with low latency data on data transformations."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the initial setup process."
"PyFlink is not as fully featured as Python itself, so there are some limitations to what you can do with it."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"Amazon's CloudFormation templates don't allow for direct deployment in the private subnet."
"In a future release, they could improve on making the error descriptions more clear."
"We have a machine learning team that works with Python, but Apache Flink does not have full support for the language."
"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."
"There is a learning curve. It takes time to learn."
"In terms of improvement, the UI could be better."
"The solution itself could be easier to use."
"We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws."
"There could be an improvement in the area of the user configuration section, it should be less developer-focused and more business user-focused."
"The cost and load-related optimizations are areas where the tool lacks and needs improvement."
"Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial."
"We would like to have the ability to do arbitrary stateful functions in Python."
"The initial setup is quite complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Apache Flink is open source so we pay no licensing for the use of the software."
"The solution is open-source, which is free."
"It's an open source."
"This is an open-source platform that can be used free of charge."
"It's an open-source solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Flink?
The product helps us to create both simple and complex data processing tasks. Over time, it has facilitated integration and navigation across multiple data sources tailored to each client's needs. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Flink?
The solution is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Apache Flink?
There are more libraries that are missing and also maybe more capabilities for machine learning. It could have a friendly user interface for pipeline configuration, deployment, and monitoring.
What do you like most about Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws, as we've only used stable features like batch micro-batch. Integration poses no problem; however, I don't use some features and can...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
We use Spark Streaming in a micro-batch region. It's not a full real-time system, but it offers high performance and low latency.
 

Also Known As

Flink
Spark Streaming
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LogRhythm, Inc., Inter-American Development Bank, Scientific Technologies Corporation, LotLinx, Inc., Benevity, Inc.
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Flink vs. Apache Spark Streaming and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.