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Hugging Face

The AI community building the future

As of 30 August 2026, Hugging Face is free to use. Open-source AI platform hosting models, datasets, and ML applications. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Hugging Face is launched in 2016, available on Web, API.

Overview

What Hugging Face does

Open-source AI platform hosting models, datasets, and ML applications. Hugging Face is the leading hub for sharing and discovering machine learning models with 500,000+ models available.

What people use it for

  • ai tools management
  • Workflow automation
  • Reporting

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Hugging Face.

  • Model discovery across 3 million models lacks robust filtering and sorting by quality metrics
  • Community-driven content means variable model quality and documentation
  • Private models and datasets require Pro subscription
  • Enterprise support and SLAs require custom arrangements

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Hugging Face

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Capabilities

Features

  • Model hub

  • Datasets

  • Spaces

  • Transformers library

  • GitHub

    Integration with GitHub

  • Cloud providers

    Integration with Cloud providers

  • MLOps tools

    Integration with MLOps tools

  • Web support

    Available on web

  • Api support

    Available on api

  • Library support

    Available on library

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Hugging Face free to use?

Yes. Hugging Face allows users to host and collaborate on unlimited public models, datasets, and applications at no cost. Models can be accessed and used freely from the Hub.

Source
How many models are available on Hugging Face?

Hugging Face Hub currently hosts nearly 3 million machine learning models across various tasks including text generation, image processing, and video generation.

Source
What is the Hugging Face Inference API?

Hugging Face provides access to 45,000+ models from leading AI providers through a single unified API with no service fees, simplifying access to diverse models.

Source
What content types does Hugging Face support?

Hugging Face supports text, image, video, audio, and 3D content models, allowing collaboration across multiple modalities and use cases.

Source
What is the transformers library?

Transformers is a Hugging Face library built for natural language processing applications, providing pre-built models and utilities for NLP tasks.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Hugging Face

Company
Hugging Face
Based in
New York, New York
Founders
Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, Thomas Wolf

Timeline

Hugging Face over time

  1. Funding2023-08-01$235m

    Series D of $235M led by Salesforce Ventures, valuation $4.5B

    Source
  2. Funding2019-12-01$15m

    Series A of $15M

    Source
  3. Funding2018-05-01$4m

    Series A of $4M

    Source
  4. Funding2017-03-01$1.2m

    Series seed of $1.2M from Betaworks, SV Angel, and Kevin Durant

    Source
  5. Founded2016-01-01

    Hugging Face founded in New York City as AI chatbot company

    Source
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Hugging Face, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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