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lmgtfy... first result, cmon man...
to be fair online there seems to be a lot of crossover in usage
They are sometimes the same thing and sometimes not. For an OTC product, a trader is both a flow trade and a market maker.
For a listed product, a sales-trader acts as a market maker while the flow trader trades the position away.
Market makers are generally supposed to generate volume while flow traders are supposed to manage risk.
anybody can put bids and offers into the screens and be a "market maker" but you must be a dealer and have customers to be a "flow trader".
When a customer calls a dealer and asks for a bid or offer (or submits a RFQ over a platform like TradeWeb), the resulting trade is a "flow". The dealer showed a bid or offer (or both), thereby "making a market" and if the customer chooses to do a trade at the dealers market, then the dealer gets a "flow trade" from the process of being a "market maker"
Separately, anybody can place bids and offers into the electronic screens (therby also making them a "market maker"), and when they hit or lifted, they are seeing a type of flow (a trade)...but generally "flow" is referring to OTC trades that are mostly hidden from the larger community....its a private transaction between the customer and the dealer, and doesn't show up in any widely distributed electronic screens. This is why dealers will say they "like to see flow" because its a type of hidden information, and has value (there was a buyer or seller...you now have a risk position...but only you and the customer know about it)
so, the difference is akin to how is a square different from a rectangle.
A flow trader is a market maker...but a market maker is not necessarily a flow trader.
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