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Hugging Face vs TensorFlow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 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

Hugging Face
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TensorFlow
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Hugging Face is 7.9%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TensorFlow is 5.8%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Hugging Face7.9%
TensorFlow5.8%
Other86.3%
AI Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

SwaminathanSubramanian - PeerSpot reviewer
Director/Enterprise Solutions Architect, Technology Advisor at Kyndryl
Versatility empowers AI concept development despite the multi-GPU challenge
Regarding scalability, I'm finding the multi-GPU aspect of it challenging. Training the model is another hurdle, although I'm only getting into that aspect currently. Organizations are apprehensive about investing in multi-GPU setups. Additionally, data cleanup is a challenge that needs to be resolved, as data must be mature and pristine.
TJ
Owner at Go knowledge
Has good stability, but the process of creating models could be more user-friendly
The platform integrates well with other tools, especially Python, which we use to create models. These models can be deployed on mobile devices, which perfectly suits our requirements. It supports our AI-driven initiatives very well by producing AI models, which is its primary function. I recommend it for those seeking specialized scripting. However, it's important to consider other options as well. It is better suited for specialists in the field and is less user-friendly than general tools like Excel. I rate it overall at six out of ten. While it is a powerful tool, other software options are slightly simpler for training models.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate this product nine out of ten."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that it's open-source and has hundreds of packages already available. This makes it quite helpful for creating our LLMs."
"What I find the most valuable about Hugging Face is that I can check all the models on it and see which ones have the best performance without using another platform."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that it shows trending models. All the new models, even Google's demo models, appear at the top. You can find all the open-source models in one place. You can use them directly and easily find their documentation. It's very simple to find documentation and write code. If you want to work with AI and machine learning, Hugging Face is a perfect place to start."
"I appreciate the versatility and the fact that it has generalized many models."
"The solution is easy to use compared to other frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow."
"My preferred aspects are natural language processing and question-answering."
"Hugging Face provides open-source models, making it the best open-source and reliable solution."
"Our clients were not aware they were using TensorFlow, so that aspect was transparent. I think we personally chose TensorFlow because it provided us with more of the end-to-end package that you can use for all the steps regarding billing and our models. So basically data processing, training the model, evaluating the model, updating the model, deploying the model and all of these steps without having to change to a new environment."
"It is open-source, and it is being worked on all the time. You don't have to pay all the big bucks like Azure and Databricks. You can just use your local machine with the open-source TensorFlow and create pretty good models."
"The most valuable features are the frameworks and the functionality to work with different data, even when we have a certain quantity of data flowing."
"What made TensorFlow so appealing to us is that you could run it on a cluster computer and on a mobile device."
"Optimization is very good in TensorFlow. There are many opportunities to do hyper-parameter training."
"It is easy to use and learn."
"TensorFlow is a framework that makes it really easy to use for deep learning."
"Google is behind TensorFlow, and they provide excellent documentation. It's very thorough and very helpful."
 

Cons

"The solution must provide an efficient LLM."
"I've worked on three projects using Hugging Face, and only once did we encounter a problem with the code. We had to use another open-source embedding from OpenAI to resolve it. Our team has three members: me, my colleague, and a team leader. We looked at the problem and resolved it."
"Access to the models and datasets could be improved. Many interesting ones are restricted."
"Regarding scalability, I'm finding the multi-GPU aspect of it challenging."
"Everything is pretty much sorted in Hugging Face, but it could be improved if there was an AI chatbot or an AI assistant in Hugging Face platform itself, which can guide you through the whole platform, making it easier for the user."
"Regarding scalability, I'm finding the multi-GPU aspect of it challenging. Training the model is another hurdle, although I'm only getting into that aspect currently."
"It can incorporate AI into its services."
"The initial setup can be rated as a seven out of ten due to occasional issues during model deployment, which might require adjustments."
"However, if I want to change just one thing in the implementation of TensorFlow functions I have to copy everything that they wrote and I change it manually if indeed it can be amended. This is really hard as it's written in C++ and has a lot of complications."
"TensorFlow deep learning takes a lot of computation power. The more systems you can use, the easier it is. That's a good ability, if you can make a system run immediately at the same time on the same task, it's much faster rather than you having one system running which is slower. Running systems in parallel is a complex situation, but it can improve. There is a lot of work involved."
"There are a lot of problems, such as integrating our custom code. In my experience model tuning has been a bit difficult to edit and tune the graph model for best performance. We have to go into the model but we do not have a model viewer for quick access."
"The solution is hard to integrate with the GPUs."
"Personally, I find it to be a bit too much AI-oriented."
"It would be nice to have more pre-trained models that we can utilize within layers. I utilize a Mac, and I am unable to utilize AMD GPUs. That's something that I would definitely be like to be able to access within TensorFlow since most of it is with CUDA ML. This only matters for local machines because, in Azure, you can just access any GPU you want from the cloud. It doesn't really matter, but the clients that I work with don't have cloud accounts, or they don't want to utilize that or spend the money. They all see it as too expensive and want to know what they can do on their local machines."
"It would be cool if TensorFlow could make it easier for companies like us to program for running it across different hyperscalers."
"There are connection issues that interrupt the download needed for the data sets. We need to prepare them ourselves."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I recall seeing a fee of nine dollars, and there's also an enterprise option priced at twenty dollars per month."
"The tool is open-source. The cost depends on what task you're doing. If you're using a large language model with around 12 million parameters, it will cost more. On average, Hugging Face is open source so you can download models to your local machine for free. For deployment, you can use any cloud service."
"The solution is open source."
"So, it's requires expensive machines to open services or open LLM models."
"Hugging Face is an open-source solution."
"We do not have to pay for the product."
"I did not require a license for this solution. It a free open-source solution."
"I think for learners to deploy a project, you can actually use TensorFlow for free. It's just amazing to have an open-source platform like TensorFlow to deploy your own project. Here in Russia no one really cares about licenses, as it is totally open source and free. My clients in the United States were also pleased to learn when they enquired, that licensing is free."
"The solution is free."
"TensorFlow is free."
"It is open-source software. You don't have to pay all the big bucks like Azure and Databricks."
"We are using the free version."
"I rate TensorFlow's pricing a five out of ten."
"I am using the open-source version of TensorFlow and it is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Hugging Face?
Everything is pretty much sorted in Hugging Face, but it could be improved if there was an AI chatbot or an AI assistant in Hugging Face platform itself, which can guide you through the whole platf...
What is your primary use case for Hugging Face?
My main use case for Hugging Face is to download open-source models and train on a local machine. We use Hugging Face Transformers for simple and fast integration in our applications and AI-based a...
What advice do you have for others considering Hugging Face?
We have seen improved productivity and time saved from using Hugging Face; for a task that would have taken six hours, it saved us five hours, and we completed it in one hour with the plug-and-play...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TensorFlow?
I am not familiar with the pricing setup cost and licensing.
What needs improvement with TensorFlow?
Providing more control by allowing users to build custom functions would make TensorFlow a better option. It currently offers inbuilt functions, however, having the ability to implement custom libr...
What is your primary use case for TensorFlow?
I've used TensorFlow for image classification tasks, object detection tasks, and OCR.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airbnb, NVIDIA, Twitter, Google, Dropbox, Intel, SAP, eBay, Uber, Coca-Cola, Qualcomm
Find out what your peers are saying about Hugging Face vs. TensorFlow and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.