Free-tier head-to-head comparison.
Pick Hugging Face Inference when trying any of the 300k+ hf models without setup. niche or fine-tuned models that other providers do not host.
Pick Together AI when open-source-first stacks. use when you want llama 3.1 405b, deepseek v3, or to fine-tune.
| Feature | Hugging Face Inference | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| Top model | meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct | meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo |
| Free RPM | — | 60 |
| Free RPD | 1,000 | — |
| Free credit | — | $1 |
| Card required | No | No |
| OpenAI-compatible | Yes | Yes |
| API base | https://api-inference.huggingface.co | https://api.together.xyz/v1 |
| Best for | Trying any of the 300k+ HF models without setup. Niche or fine-tuned models that other providers do not host. | Open-source-first stacks. Use when you want Llama 3.1 405B, DeepSeek V3, or to fine-tune. |
| Not for | Production traffic on free tier — cold starts and quotas hurt UX. | Closed-model needs (GPT-4, Claude). Use OpenRouter or direct provider. |