Hugging Face Inference Providers free credits
Hugging Face (routed to partner providers) Free API tier
The catch: Free accounts get only $0.10 of credits a month (subject to change); after that you must buy credits.
| Access | Free API tier |
|---|---|
| Free limits | Free users: $0.10 of Inference Providers credits per month ("subject to change"). PRO users: $2.00 per month. Team or Enterprise orgs: $2.00 per seat per month (PRO/Team credits also cover other HF compute). Credits apply only to requests routed through Hugging Face, not to calls made with your own provider key. Providers' prices are passed through with no Hugging Face markup. Past the credits, free users must buy credits to keep going. |
| Modality | text, code, image, video, audio, embeddings |
| Credit card | – |
| Commercial use | Allowed |
| Trains on your data | – |
| Licence or terms | Hugging Face Terms of Service (plus each model's licence and each provider's terms) |
| Context window | 131,072 tokens |
| Model id | openai/gpt-oss-120b |
| Base URL | https://router.huggingface.co/v1 |
| Last checked | 2 Oct 2026 |
How to use Inference Providers
It speaks the OpenAI API at https://router.huggingface.co/v1, so the OpenAI SDK you already use works once you change the base URL and key.
curl https://router.huggingface.co/v1/chat/completions -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"model":"openai/gpt-oss-120b:fastest","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'I want to use the free AI model "Inference Providers" from Hugging Face (model id: openai/gpt-oss-120b) in my project. Please: 1. Check the provider docs and give me the exact steps to get a free API key. 2. Give me a minimal working example that reads the key from an environment variable. 3. Tell me the real free limits and any catch (commercial use, card, data use). Listed limits: $0.10 of credits a month on a free account. 4. If the same provider has a more generous free option, mention it.
Before you ship on it
- Free accounts get only $0.10 of credits a month (subject to change); after that you must buy credits.
- No non-commercial restriction found on the pricing page; it says buying more credits keeps access going "for production workloads". The chosen model's own licence also applies (openai/gpt-oss-120b is apache-2.0 per its…
- Free tiers are shared capacity: treat the limits as a ceiling, not a promise, and keep a paid fallback.
Questions
Is Hugging Face Inference Providers free credits free?
Yes. Hugging Face offers it as free api tier, with these limits: $0.10 of credits a month on a free account.
Can I use Hugging Face Inference Providers free credits commercially?
Yes, under Hugging Face Terms of Service (plus each model's licence and each provider's terms). Check the current terms before you ship.
How do I start with Hugging Face Inference Providers free credits?
It speaks the OpenAI API at https://router.huggingface.co/v1, so the OpenAI SDK you already use works once you change the base URL and key.
Source: huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers/pricing, checked 2 Oct 2026.