Resources // LLM Tokens
Hugging Face Inference Providers
Offer 200+ models, no markup
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Updated Jun 2026
The offer
- Free monthly inference credits, applied automatically when you route through Hugging Face: $0.10/month on the free account, $2.00/month on PRO, and $2.00 per seat on Team / Enterprise
- One token plus an OpenAI-compatible router endpoint (`router.huggingface.co/v1`) reaches 200+ models across ~19 partner providers (Cerebras, Groq, Together, Fireworks, SambaNova, Novita, Replicate, and more)
- No Hugging Face markup: you pay the same per-token rate as the underlying provider; HF just passes the cost through
- PRO is $9/month: includes the $2 credits, ~8× ZeroGPU quota with priority, 1 TB private storage, and Spaces Dev Mode
- Routing policies let you auto-pick the fastest or cheapest backend, or pin a specific provider
Who qualifies
- Free credits: every Hugging Face user automatically, just create a token with the "Make calls to Inference Providers" permission
- PRO: $9/month self-serve; Team / Enterprise bill per seat and can pool credits with a single bill-to header
- Bring-your-own provider key (BYOK) bills you directly at the provider, and the HF free credits do NOT apply
- Some accelerators hand out Hugging Face PRO promo codes worth several months free. Check your accelerator's perks (terms vary; confirm with HF)
Community Insights
Developers value Hugging Face Inference Providers as a single OpenAI-compatible gateway to many third-party inference backends (Together, Novita, Cerebras, and others) that lets them switch providers without rewriting code. They also note it is a European option versus OpenRouter. The recurring caveats: the pricing and free-tier are poorly surfaced, and behaviour can vary by the auto-selected backend (for example, tool or function calling not being enabled on a given routed model). Pin a specific provider when a feature matters.
Best Practices (from community tips)
- Route through Hugging Face (don’t use a custom provider key) when you want the free monthly credits to apply.
- Use the
:cheapestpolicy for batch work,:fastestfor latency-sensitive paths. The default auto-selects a backend for you. - Pin a specific provider (
model:provider) when you need a feature like tool/function calling, since the auto-pick may not support it. - Write against
router.huggingface.co/v1so existing OpenAI code drops in with only a base-URL and key swap. - For teams, set the
bill_toheader to pool the per-seat credits and centralise spend. - Check each provider’s data-retention policy if privacy matters. Routing is a proxy and the policy is per-provider.