Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Splunk VS Apache Flink

Compare Splunk VS Apache Flink and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Splunk logo Splunk

Splunk's operational intelligence platform helps unearth intelligent insights from machine data.

Apache Flink logo Apache Flink

Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.
  • Splunk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20
  • Apache Flink Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03

Splunk features and specs

  • Powerful Data Analysis
    Splunk provides robust data indexing and search capabilities, allowing users to analyze large volumes of log data with high flexibility and efficiency.
  • Real-Time Processing
    Splunk enables real-time monitoring and analysis of data, which helps in immediate detection of anomalies and operational issues.
  • Scalability
    Splunk can efficiently scale to handle large amounts of data from various sources, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Wide Range of Integrations
    Splunk offers extensive integration options with numerous third-party applications and services, enhancing its functionalities and utility.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    Splunk comes with a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface, which makes it easier for users to navigate and leverage its features without extensive training.
  • Advanced Security Features
    Splunk includes comprehensive security features such as access controls, data encryption, and auditing capabilities to ensure data protection and compliance.

Possible disadvantages of Splunk

  • High Cost
    Splunk is considered expensive compared to other data analytics tools, which can be a significant constraint for smaller organizations or those with limited budgets.
  • Complex Licensing
    The licensing model for Splunk can be complex and confusing, often leading to issues in predicting costs and understanding the full extent of required licensing.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a steep learning curve associated with mastering Splunk’s advanced features and query language, which can be challenging for new users.
  • Resource Intensive
    Splunk can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial computational power and storage, which might necessitate additional hardware investments.
  • Custom App Development
    Building custom apps and dashboards in Splunk may require specialized knowledge of its proprietary language, which can limit customization for users without technical expertise.

Apache Flink features and specs

  • Real-time Stream Processing
    Apache Flink is designed for real-time data streaming, offering low-latency processing capabilities that are essential for applications requiring immediate data insights.
  • Event Time Processing
    Flink supports event time processing, which allows it to handle out-of-order events effectively and provide accurate results based on the time events actually occurred rather than when they were processed.
  • State Management
    Flink provides robust state management features, making it easier to maintain and query state across distributed nodes, which is crucial for managing long-running applications.
  • Fault Tolerance
    The framework includes built-in mechanisms for fault tolerance, such as consistent checkpoints and savepoints, ensuring high reliability and data consistency even in the case of failures.
  • Scalability
    Apache Flink is highly scalable, capable of handling both batch and stream processing workloads across a distributed cluster, making it suitable for large-scale data processing tasks.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Flink has a rich set of APIs and integrations with other big data tools, such as Apache Kafka, Apache Hadoop, and Apache Cassandra, enhancing its versatility and ease of integration into existing data pipelines.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Flink

  • Complexity
    Flink’s advanced features and capabilities come with a steep learning curve, making it more challenging to set up and use compared to simpler stream processing frameworks.
  • Resource Intensive
    The framework can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial memory and CPU resources for optimal performance, which might be a concern for smaller setups or cost-sensitive environments.
  • Community Support
    While growing, the community around Apache Flink is not as large or mature as some other big data frameworks like Apache Spark, potentially limiting the availability of community-contributed resources and support.
  • Ecosystem Maturity
    Despite its integrations, the Flink ecosystem is still maturing, and certain tools and plugins may not be as developed or stable as those available for more established frameworks.
  • Operational Overhead
    Running and maintaining a Flink cluster can involve significant operational overhead, including monitoring, scaling, and troubleshooting, which might require a dedicated team or additional expertise.

Splunk videos

"Splunk Product Overview"

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Splunk in 60 Minutes | Splunk Tutorial For Beginners | Splunk Training | Splunk Tutorial | Edureka
  • Demo - Splunk Incident Review Demo

Apache Flink videos

GOTO 2019 • Introduction to Stateful Stream Processing with Apache Flink • Robert Metzger

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Apache Flink Tutorial | Flink vs Spark | Real Time Analytics Using Flink | Apache Flink Training
  • Tutorial - How to build a modern stream processor: The science behind Apache Flink - Stefan Richter

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Splunk and Apache Flink)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Big Data
0 0%
100% 100
Log Management
100 100%
0% 0
Stream Processing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Splunk and Apache Flink

Splunk Reviews

The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
What sets Splunk apart, likely contributing to its premium price, is its expansive network. With over 2,200 partners spanning various industries, Splunk ensures users can fully leverage the platform. Additionally, boasting a community of over 18,000 active members and 1,800 Splunk experts, users have access to support for problem-solving, architecture, deployment, and...
Source: betterstack.com
Top 10 Grafana Alternatives in 2024
Splunk’s security and data monitoring features make it a potent alternative to Grafana. The platform helps collect and store extensive data from multiple platforms like databases, messaging systems, and network devices.
Source: middleware.io
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2024]
Splunk's strengths lie in its adeptness at handling large-scale data ingestion and robust analytics capabilities. This makes it invaluable for organizations with complex data monitoring needs, particularly in enterprise security and observability.
Source: signoz.io
10 Best Grafana Alternatives [2023 Comparison]
Splunk is a well-known log management solution that’s been around forever. It offers a variety of observability solutions, making it an ideal Grafana alternative in terms of functionality. Splunk offers users Log Management, Synthetic monitoring, Infrastructure Monitoring, APM, Security Monitoring, and more.
Source: sematext.com
Top 11 Best SIEM Tools in 2022 For Real-Time Incident Response and Security
Splunk provides improved security operations like customizable dashboards, asset investigator, statistical analysis, and incident review, classification, and investigation. It has features of alerts management, risk scores, etc. It provides security services to the public sectors, financial services, and healthcare.

Apache Flink Reviews

We have no reviews of Apache Flink yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Flink should be more popular than Splunk. It has been mentiond 40 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Splunk mentions (19)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)
    Splunk (A Cisco Company) [https://splunk.com] | Principal Software Engineer, Backend | Remote (Vancouver / Toronto, Canada) Splunk is here to build a safer and more resilient digital world. The world's leading enterprises use our unified security and observability platform to keep their digital systems secure and reliable. The role I'm hiring for is to lead the effort for a new API that will power Splunk's new... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Can I install apps on Free 60 day Enterprise?
    I'm using the free 60day Enterprise license and tried to install different apps from the "Browse more apps" menu in Splunk Enterprise, but it doesn't accept my credentials when I try to log in. I tried my username and password from splunk.com(which I'm sure it works, because I tried it straight away on the official website). Also I tried using my username and password with which I'm accessing Splunk Enterprise,... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Can someone explain this before I go a little crazy? xD
    I'm noticing a questionable trend in Splunk question/answer structure for these free courses on splunk.com So I go to an exam dump to try and compare to something I have studied thus far. (Prepping for entry level 1002). Source: over 1 year ago
  • Where exactly can I start to learn?
    With your splunk.com username, you can login to Splunk trainings portals as well https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training.html .. There are lots of free trainings available. Enroll yourself, complete them, you will gain more confidence. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • VAST 3.0 released. Open-Source Security Data Pipelines with Kusto-like syntax
    VAST is an open-source SecDataOps project for working with data from open-source security tools. Version 3.0 adds a pipeline syntax similar to splunk, Kusto, PRQL, and Zed. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

Apache Flink mentions (40)

  • Is RisingWave the Next Apache Flink?
    Apache Flink, known initially as Stratosphere, is a distributed stream processing engine initiated by a group of researchers at TU Berlin. Since its initial release in May 2011, Flink has gained immense popularity in both academia and industry. And it is currently the most well-known streaming system globally (challenge me if you think I got it wrong!). - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • Every Database Will Support Iceberg — Here's Why
    Apache Iceberg defines a table format that separates how data is stored from how data is queried. Any engine that implements the Iceberg integration — Spark, Flink, Trino, DuckDB, Snowflake, RisingWave — can read and/or write Iceberg data directly. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • RisingWave Turns Four: Our Journey Beyond Democratizing Stream Processing
    The last decade saw the rise of open-source frameworks like Apache Flink, Spark Streaming, and Apache Samza. These offered more flexibility but still demanded significant engineering muscle to run effectively at scale. Companies using them often needed specialized stream processing engineers just to manage internal state, tune performance, and handle the day-to-day operational challenges. The barrier to entry... - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • Twitter's 600-Tweet Daily Limit Crisis: Soaring GCP Costs and the Open Source Fix Elon Musk Ignored
    Apache Flink: Flink is a unified streaming and batching platform developed under the Apache Foundation. It provides support for Java API and a SQL interface. Flink boasts a large ecosystem and can seamlessly integrate with various services, including Kafka, Pulsar, HDFS, Iceberg, Hudi, and other systems. - Source: dev.to / 25 days ago
  • Exploring the Power and Community Behind Apache Flink
    In conclusion, Apache Flink is more than a big data processing tool—it is a thriving ecosystem that exemplifies the power of open source collaboration. From its impressive technical capabilities to its innovative funding model, Apache Flink shows that sustainable software development is possible when community, corporate support, and transparency converge. As industries continue to demand efficient real-time data... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Splunk and Apache Flink, you can also consider the following products

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

NewRelic - New Relic is a Software Analytics company that makes sense of billions of metrics across millions of apps. We help the people who build modern software understand the stories their data is trying to tell them.

Amazon Kinesis - Amazon Kinesis services make it easy to work with real-time streaming data in the AWS cloud.

Grafana - Data visualization & Monitoring with support for Graphite, InfluxDB, Prometheus, Elasticsearch and many more databases

Spring Framework - The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications - on any kind of deployment platform.