TensorFlow
What it is: Google's machine learning framework. Production-ready, mobile deployment, TensorFlow Serving for APIs.
What It Does Best
Production deployment. TensorFlow Serving, TF Lite for mobile, TF.js for web. Built for scale.
Full ML pipeline. Data loading, training, deployment in one ecosystem.
Google ecosystem. Tight integration with Google Cloud, TPUs for training.
Pricing
Free. Open source, Apache 2.0 license.
When to Use It
✅ Deploying ML models to production
✅ Mobile or web ML applications
✅ Using Google Cloud infrastructure
✅ Need production-grade serving
When NOT to Use It
❌ Research and experimentation (PyTorch more flexible)
❌ Just starting ML (steeper learning curve)
❌ Simple classical ML (scikit-learn easier)
Bottom line: Built for production from day one. More complex than PyTorch but better deployment story. If your model needs to scale, TensorFlow gets you there.