Qiskit, PennyLane, Cirq, Q#, and Amazon Braket — which should you use? An honest comparison with real code samples.
Which should you start with?
If you're learning quantum computing for the first time: Qiskit — best documentation, free hardware access, largest community. If you're interested in quantum machine learning or want a hardware-agnostic framework that integrates with PyTorch: PennyLane. If you're doing hardware-aware NISQ research targeting Google's architecture: Cirq. If you're in the Microsoft/Azure ecosystem or interested in fault-tolerant algorithm design: Q#. If you need a single SDK to access multiple hardware providers in an enterprise cloud context: Amazon Braket.