Overview
A Hugging Face account comes with a set amount of free inference credit for hosted model endpoints, and Spaces offers a free tier of compute for small demos.
Steps
- Register a Hugging Face account and verify your email.
- Generate an access token in settings.
- Call models through the Inference API or Inference Providers.
- For always-on services, create a Space on free hardware.
- Store secrets inside the Space, never in front-end code.
Caveats
- Free credit resets monthly; beyond it requests are rate-limited or billed.
- Free Spaces sleep when idle, so cold starts are slow.
- Some popular models are not available on the free tier; check the model page.
Use cases
Quick model trials, open-source demos, teaching examples.