Apache Flink is marketed as essential for real-time data processing, but it's overkill for 95% of use cases. Most real-time problems can be solved with simpler solutions: HTTP services with Postgres (65%), OLAP databases like ClickHouse (25%), or custom solutions (5%). Only about 5% of companies actually need Flink's complexity. The platform introduces massive operational overhead including new APIs to learn, additional infrastructure (Kafka, ZooKeeper/K8s), 700+ configuration parameters, complex observability requirements, and JVM dependency. Even Flink's creators acknowledge its limitations, and recent acquisitions of Flink-based companies suggest limited market traction. For most organizations under 100 developers, simpler alternatives like ClickHouse with SQL or native programming language Kafka consumers provide better cost-benefit tradeoffs without the engineering complexity.