# DeepInfra vs Hugging Face Inference Providers (slim)

> DeepInfra scores 63.7 (B) to Hugging Face Inference Providers's 54 (C) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepinfra-vs-hugging-face-inference-providers.md (~7,100 tokens) · this version ~3,280 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepinfra-vs-hugging-face-inference-providers.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepinfra-vs-hugging-face-inference-providers
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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DeepInfra scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Hugging Face Inference Providers's 54 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Hugging Face Inference Providers leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do llm inference.

- DeepInfra: B 63.7, rank #501 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deepinfra.min.md
- Hugging Face Inference Providers: C 54, rank #926 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-providers.min.md
- DeepInfra, good for Agents that want many open-weight models, embeddings, image and speech behind one OpenAI-style key at low per-token prices, with spend-capped tokens. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 25; Schema & documentation, 69 against 62; Agent ergonomics, 77 against 58.
- Hugging Face Inference Providers, good for Agents and developers who want open-weight models from several hosts on one token and one bill, with a public price and capability list per provider. Ahead on Security & auth, 79 against 64; Maintenance & community, 80 against 61.

| Category | DeepInfra | Hugging Face Inference Providers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 75 | 25 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 69 | 62 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 77 | 58 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 79 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 61 | 80 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 68 | 71 |

| Fact (where they differ) | DeepInfra | Hugging Face Inference Providers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model router |
| Vendor | Deep Infra Inc. | Hugging Face, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.deepinfra.com/v1/openai` | `https://router.huggingface.co/v1` |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the DeepInfra Terms of Service. The Python and Node SDKs and the docs repository are MIT | Proprietary service under the Hugging Face Terms of Service, which name Inference Providers. The `huggingface_hub` Python client is Apache-2.0 and `@huggingface/inference` is MIT |
| Last release | 2026-10-26 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-17 | 2022-09-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-15 | 2023-03-28 |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 21 stars, 1.2k npm/wk, 50 PyPI/wk | 483k npm/wk, 71.5M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, DeepInfra +50: DeepInfra 75 (Hosted reading. Own status page at status.deepinfra.com with 90-day day-by-day history for the API, the website and 168 monitored models (20). On 2 November 2026 the API component shows 100 per cent over 86.7 measured days and the website 99.99 per cent, with one 8-minute degradation on 19 August 2026. The Atom feed's 50 newest items, 20 August to 30 October 2026, are all automated major-outage observations on single models, "not an announced incident", among them MiMo-V2.5 from 27 August to 4 September, Qwen3-TTS for 37 and 32 hours, Nemotron-3-Ultra for 25 hours and a run of short Nemotron-3.5-Lightning outages in early September. No written incident touched the API. Each observation is one model, partial under this run's rule, as together-inference's single-model monitor downtime was read, so minor only (20). The 8 October reading of 15 sat between checklist values. 200 concurrent requests per model, published (15). 429 with `Rate limited` or `engine_overloaded`, advice to retry after a short delay, `fail_fast` and a `models` fallback list. No `Retry-After` header or backoff figures were found (10 of 15). No SLA found. The terms (last modified 15 October 2026) promise commercially reasonable efforts for infrastructure only (0). Generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 75.); Hugging Face Inference Providers 25 (Hosted lines. status.huggingface.co is a Better Stack page with 90-day component history for the Hub, Inference Endpoints, Spaces, the CDNs and Jobs, but no component for Inference Providers or the router (10 of 20). With no component, there is no readable incident history for the surface agents call, and the feed's 23 items from 10 June to 7 October 2026 don't name it (5). No rate limits for the router were found; the Hub rate-limits page gives numbers for Hub APIs, resolvers and pages only (0). No 429 or overload guidance for the router was found (0). No SLA found (0). Chat completions on the router is generally available; the Responses API is labelled beta (10). Routing between providers with `:fastest` or `:cheapest` softens a single provider's outage, which this checklist doesn't score.)
- Agent ergonomics, DeepInfra +19: DeepInfra 77 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with `tool_choice` of none, auto, required or a named function, and streaming. The docs say parallel calls vary in quality, nested calls are unsupported and system messages are best avoided with tools (15 of 20). `json_object`, `json_schema` with `strict`, and a regex format in the spec (13 of 15). Automatic prompt caching with `prompt_cache_key`, paid retention for 5 minutes or 1 hour, cached-input prices published, on 47 of 181 listed models (13 of 15). Context of 1,048,576 tokens on DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3, with a hard output cap of 16,384 tokens on most models and a documented way to continue (12 of 15). Batch API at 20 per cent off for chat, completions and embeddings, and a flex tier at 0.8x (10). The OpenAI and Anthropic clients work with a changed base URL. The Python package `deepinfra` 0.3.0 dates from 12 August 2026, and npm listed 2.0.2 from May 2024 on 8 October (7 of 10). 429 carries an `engine_overloaded` code. Native routes return a bare `error` string, and no list of codes was found (7 of 15).); Hugging Face Inference Providers 58 (Router reading of the model checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors), as for openrouter. Tool calling through the OpenAI-compatible API with `tool_choice`, support flagged per provider in /v1/models (15 of 20). Structured output documented, support flagged per provider and false on some (10 of 15). No prompt caching guidance found, though the Enterprise usage API counts cached input tokens (3 of 15). Routes to models with up to 1,048,576 tokens of context per the model list, a judgement call since a router has no default model (15). No batch API (0 of 10). Official clients in Python and JavaScript, plus any OpenAI SDK (10). Errors not documented (5 of 15).)
- Maintenance & community, Hugging Face Inference Providers +19: DeepInfra 61 (Model reading. The docs repository changed on 26 October 2026, and on 22 October documented Nemotron 3.5 image embeddings and reranker scores (30). Deprecated models get at least one week's notice by email, then requests are forwarded to a replacement (5 of 12). Churn. In the 90 days to 2 November four redirect dates passed (8, 9, 12 and 25 October, five models), Kimi-K2.7-Code was deprecated before 28 September, and three more are scheduled for 2 and 3 November. Three or more removal dates in 90 days give 0, as groq and fireworks-inference were read (0 of 8, was 4 when the five were only scheduled). No changelog. Support is by Discord and a feedback address, and the docs repository is public (7 of 15). Replies on the SDK repositories were not examined (3 of 10). Python `deepinfra` 0.3.0 from 12 August 2026 with a changelog. The Node repository tagged 2.1.0 on 1 September 2026, and npm couldn't be read on 2 November, so its 8 October reading of 2.0.2 from 8 May 2024 stands (9 of 15). CI workflows in both SDK repositories (7 of 10). 30 + 5 + 0 + 7 + 3 + 9 + 7 = 61.); Hugging Face Inference Providers 80 (Model reading. huggingface_hub 2.4.0 tagged on 29 October 2026 and the Inference Providers docs updated daily by an automated job, last on 6 November (30). huggingface_hub 2.2.0, 2.3.0 and 2.4.0 and @huggingface/inference 4.13.28 to 4.13.32 in the 90 days (20). No dedicated changelog; the Hub has a forum and Discord, and GitHub issue replies were not read (8 of 15). Current official SDKs in Python and JavaScript (15). The Python client supports Python 3.10 and later, per the Inference Endpoints check; CI not read (7 of 10).)
- Security & auth, Hugging Face Inference Providers +15: DeepInfra 64 (Model reading. Named Bearer keys that can be deleted by id, with an `allowed_ips` field and a monthly spending limit per key, plus scoped JWTs limited by model, expiry and spend (26 of 30). Less 10 because `GET /v1/scoped-jwt?jwtoken=` is still the documented way to inspect a JWT and puts a live token in the query string. The two deprecated routes that carried the API token in the URL path are no longer in the OpenAPI document (16 of 30). The terms say Customer Data is not used to train, fine-tune or improve any model. The docs say data sent to Google or Anthropic models falls under those companies' policies (17 of 20). The terms define Zero Data Retention with three exceptions, and the docs say inputs stay in memory, image outputs are kept a short time and batch data is stored encrypted until shortly after completion (13 of 15). Usage per key, request costs and deployment logs are in the API. No account audit log was found (8 of 15). The trust centre at trust.deepinfra.com now loads and lists SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA as compliant, with reports and policies on request, and the privacy policy says the same. No security.txt, disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (10 of 20, as other listings with certification claims and no disclosure route).); Hugging Face Inference Providers 79 (Model reading. Fine-grained user access tokens that can be limited to the `Make calls to Inference Providers` permission, rotated and revoked, plus a public revocation endpoint for leaked tokens, and organisation approval of fine-grained tokens on paid plans (30). Hugging Face says it doesn't store user data for training, but data handling past the router follows each provider's policy, with no per-request filter to exclude providers that train or retain (12 of 20). Request bodies and responses aren't stored when routed and debug logs are kept up to 30 days without user data or tokens, with provider retention outside that statement (10 of 15). Usage by model and provider in account settings, an Enterprise usage API, and Team and Enterprise admins can disable providers and set a spending limit (13 of 15). SOC 2 Type 2 for the Hub, of which the docs say Inference Providers is a feature, and security.txt valid to 2030 per the Inference Endpoints check; no bug bounty found (14 of 20).)
- Schema & documentation, DeepInfra +7: DeepInfra 69 (Model reading. Public OpenAPI 3.1.0 document at api.deepinfra.com/openapi.json with 131 paths, 157 operations and 257 schemas on 2 November 2026. `llms.txt` now links that document, though the docs host's own copy still returns Mintlify's sample plant store document, and the spec lists chat at `/v1/chat/completions` while every docs example uses `/v1/openai/chat/completions` (22 of 25). `llms.txt` with 224 links and a Markdown copy of every docs page (10). Guide pages for tool calling, structured output, caching, batch and service tiers say when to use each. Many reference operations have a name and no description (14 of 20). Typed parameters with 49 enums, 31 chat properties and two required (11 of 15). Curl, Python and JavaScript examples on each page. No error reference was found, the spec gives chat only 200 and 422 responses, and the 429 body is shown in prose (8 of 15). No changelog was found. The spec version reads 1.0.0, and the docs repository on GitHub has a public commit history (4 of 15).); Hugging Face Inference Providers 62 (No OpenAPI document for the router (openapi.json paths answer 404). The task reference pages are generated from typed JSON Schema specs in huggingface.js, and the router's /v1/models gives a machine-readable catalogue, so 12 of 25. llms.txt for the Inference Providers docs and a Markdown twin of every page via `.md` (10). Guides say what each task and policy is for, with a quick setup page for coding agents (14 of 20). Parameter tables with types for chat completion, though `response_format` and `tool_choice` show as unknown types (9 of 15). Examples in Python, JavaScript and curl on every task page, but no documented error responses for the router (9 of 15). No changelog of its own; the Hub changelog doesn't cover it and dated changes are only in the hub-docs history (8 of 15).)