{ "data": { "a": { "slug": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "name": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints", "vendor": "Hugging Face, Inc.", "vendorUrl": "https://huggingface.co", "kind": "http-api", "category": "gpu-compute", "summary": "Managed Hugging Face service that deploys a Hub model as a dedicated, autoscaling HTTPS endpoint on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, using vLLM, TGI, SGLang, llama.cpp, TEI or a custom container. Managed by REST API, Python client, CLI or MCP.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "repo": "https://github.com/huggingface/hf-endpoints-documentation", "license": "Proprietary service under the Hugging Face Terms of Service. The `huggingface_hub` Python client and CLI are Apache-2.0", "transports": [ "http" ], "remoteUrl": "https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud", "packages": [ { "registry": "pypi", "name": "huggingface_hub" } ], "auth": "mixed", "authNotes": "Hugging Face access token sent as `Authorization: Bearer $HF_TOKEN` to the management API and to each endpoint. Tokens are created in the account settings in a browser and can be fine-grained, read or write. The MCP server uses OAuth through huggingface.co (authorisation code with PKCE, device code, dynamic client registration) with `read-endpoints` and `write-endpoints` scopes. `GET /v2/provider` and the catalogue list need no token. Access is self-serve, with quota requests for larger instances.", "pricing": "usage", "pricingNotes": "Usage priced by instance hour, billed per minute while a replica is initialising or running. GPUs run from $0.50 an hour (T4) to $10 (H100 on GCP), CPUs from $0.033. No free tier or trial was found. The docs require a payment method and credits before deploying, and the pricing page says an active subscription. Paused endpoints and endpoints at zero replicas aren't billed for compute (https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-endpoints/support/pricing).", "priceSummary": "$0.033 / vCPU-hr", "where": "hosted", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "No x402, MPP or L402 in the Inference Endpoints docs, the two OpenAPI documents or the pricing page (checked 2026-10-08).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": 19, "popularity": { "githubStars": null, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": 60014944, "asOf": "2026-10-08" }, "docsUrl": "https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-endpoints/index", "llmsTxt": "https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-endpoints/llms.txt", "openapi": "https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud/openapi.json", "capabilities": [ "compute.gpu", "compute.endpoints", "compute.containers" ], "tags": [ "hosted", "usage-priced", "python", "cli", "mcp", "oauth", "openapi", "llms-txt", "status-page", "soc2", "enterprise" ], "lastRelease": "2026-10-08", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 64.5, "grade": "B", "agentReady": false, "rank": 314, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 3, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 62, "maintenance": 80, "payments": 20, "reliability": 63, "schema": 73, "security": 83, "transparency": 68 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-08" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "OAuth scopes separate reading endpoints from writing them, both OpenAPI documents are public, and the unauthenticated `/v2/provider` route lists every instance with its hourly price. An account needs a payment method and credits before the first deployment, no rate limits or SLA were found for the management API, and the docs price table disagrees with the live list in places.", "bestFor": "Teams whose models already live on the Hugging Face Hub and who want a dedicated endpoint on a named cloud and region with standard open-source engines.", "strengths": [ "Public OpenAPI 3.1 documents for the management API (46 operations) and the catalogue API (3), plus llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page", "The MCP server at endpoints.huggingface.co/mcp uses OAuth with `read-endpoints` and `write-endpoints` scopes, PKCE and dynamic client registration", "`GET /v2/provider` needs no token and returns each instance type by cloud and region with status and price per hour", "The MCP `delete_endpoint` tool returns a preview and deletes only on a second call with `confirm: true`", "The Inference Endpoints API component on status.huggingface.co shows 100 per cent uptime over the 90 days to 8 October 2026" ], "weaknesses": [ "No free tier. The docs require a payment method and credits, and replicas are billed while initialising as well as running", "No rate limits, SLA or idempotency keys were found for the management API, and its OpenAPI document lists only 200 responses on 43 of 46 operations", "The docs price table and the live provider list disagree. Inferentia2 x1 is $0.75 in the docs and $1.95 in the API, and AWS H200 is listed in the docs and marked deprecated in the API", "A start from zero replicas takes minutes by the docs' own account, and the proxy answers 503 until a replica is ready", "The Hub outage of 16 July 2026 took the Inference Endpoints UI down for 1 hour 37 minutes" ], "agentNotes": [ "Call `GET https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud/v2/provider` first and pick an instance whose `status` is `available`. The docs table lists types the API marks deprecated or not available", "Send `X-Scale-Up-Timeout: 600` on requests to an endpoint that scales to zero, or handle 503 while the first replica starts", "Set `scaleToZeroTimeout` yourself. The docs give a default of 1 hour and the OpenAPI document says 15 minutes", "Pause or delete an endpoint when the job is done. Billing covers every minute a replica is initialising or running", "Give the agent a fine-grained token or the `read-endpoints` scope unless it must deploy. Endpoints are private by default and take the same Hugging Face token as a bearer" ], "metrics": { "kind": "remote", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 0, "avgRating": 0, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "B", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 64.5 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 62, "maintenance": 80, "payments": 20, "reliability": 63, "schema": 73, "security": 83, "transparency": 68 }, "provenanceScore": 67 }, "connect": { "install": "pip install huggingface_hub", "http": "curl \"https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud/v2/endpoint/$NAMESPACE\" \\\n -H \"Authorization: Bearer $HF_TOKEN\"" }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/compute.gpu", "tool": "https://letme.dev/hugging-face-inference-endpoints" }, "area": "models", "unitPrices": [ { "item": "NVIDIA T4 16 GB x1 (AWS, GCP)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 0.5, "note": "Billed per minute while initialising or running" }, { "item": "NVIDIA L4 24 GB x1 (AWS)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 0.8, "note": "$0.70 on GCP us-east4" }, { "item": "NVIDIA A10G 24 GB x1 (AWS)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 1, "note": "us-east-1 and eu-west-1" }, { "item": "NVIDIA L40S 48 GB x1 (AWS)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 1.8, "note": "us-east-1" }, { "item": "NVIDIA A100 80 GB x1 (AWS)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 2.5, "note": "$3.60 on GCP us-east4" }, { "item": "NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB x1 (AWS)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 2.75, "note": "us-east-2, in the live provider list and absent from the docs table" }, { "item": "NVIDIA H200 141 GB x1 (GCP)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 5, "note": "us-south1. The AWS H200 in us-west-2 is marked deprecated in the API" }, { "item": "NVIDIA H100 80 GB x1 (GCP)", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 10, "note": "us-east4. The AWS H100 at $4.50 is deprecated from December 2025" }, { "item": "Intel Sapphire Rapids x1, 1 vCPU and 2 GB (AWS)", "unit": "vcpu-hour", "usd": 0.033, "note": "$0.050 on GCP and $0.060 on Azure Intel Xeon" } ], "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Hugging Face, Inc.", "domain": "huggingface.co", "domainRegistered": "", "endpointOnVendorDomain": false, "terms": "https://huggingface.co/terms-of-service", "privacy": "https://huggingface.co/privacy", "statusPage": "https://status.huggingface.co", "changelog": "https://huggingface.co/changelog", "securityTxt": "valid", "checked": "2026-10-08", "notes": [ "The Terms of Service (effective 15 September 2022) name Hugging Face, Inc., a Delaware corporation, list Inference Endpoints among the services they cover and are governed by New York law. They link Supplemental Terms (effective 28 April 2025) as a PDF, of which our reader extracted only the first page.", "The privacy policy (effective 28 March 2023) names Hugging Face, Inc. and its EU establishment Hugging Face, SAS, 9 rue des Colonnes, 75002 Paris, and lists 11 subprocessors with countries. The Inference Endpoints security page points to it.", "The management API answers at api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud and deployed endpoints at subdomains of endpoints.huggingface.cloud, a second domain of the vendor's. The catalogue API and the MCP server are on endpoints.huggingface.co.", "huggingface.co/.well-known/security.txt gives security@huggingface.co and expires on 1 July 2030. endpoints.huggingface.co/.well-known/security.txt returns 404.", "status.huggingface.co is a Better Stack page with separate components for the Inference Endpoints UI and API.", "The changelog at huggingface.co/changelog covers the whole Hub. Inference Endpoints has no changelog of its own. Dated changes are in the docs repository's commit history.", "rdap.org returned 404 for huggingface.co, so the registration date is unrecorded." ], "score": 67 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "live": { "slug": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "probe": { "target": "https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud", "method": "get", "lastAt": "2026-10-09T10:14:16.845976215Z", "lastOk": true, "lastStatus": 200, "lastMs": 312, "authRequired": false, "uptime24h": 100, "uptime30d": 100, "p50ms24h": 250, "p95ms24h": 295, "samples24h": 28, "samples30d": 28, "days": [ { "date": "2026-10-09", "probes": 28, "ok": 28 } ] }, "vendorStatus": { "page": "https://status.huggingface.co", "indicator": "unknown", "summary": "no machine-readable status found", "checkedAt": "2026-10-09T07:58:03.654181492Z" }, "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T10:14:16.845976215Z" } }, "answer": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.", "b": { "slug": "lambda", "name": "Lambda Cloud", "vendor": "Lambda", "vendorUrl": "https://lambda.ai", "kind": "http-api", "category": "gpu-compute", "summary": "On-demand GPU virtual machines and clusters, with an API for provisioning compute and persistent storage.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lambda.json", "transports": [ "http" ], "remoteUrl": "https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1", "packages": [], "auth": "api-key", "authNotes": "API key created at cloud.lambda.ai/api-keys and sent as `Authorization: Bearer`. HTTP Basic with the key as the username (`curl -u 'KEY:'`) still works as a legacy option. SSH keys registered in the account are injected into launched instances.", "pricing": "usage", "pricingNotes": "On-demand, per GPU an hour, Tesla V100 16 GB $0.79, A100 40 GB $1.99, A100 80 GB $2.79, H100 SXM 80 GB $3.99, B200 180 GB $6.69. 1-Click Clusters of HGX B200 are quoted per GPU-hour at $9.86 for 16 GPUs, $9.36 for 64 and $8.87 for 256 or more on two-week to one-year commitments. Instances bill in one-minute increments from the moment they pass health checks until you terminate them, invoiced weekly. Filesystems bill per GB used a month in one-hour increments. No free tier (https://lambda.ai/pricing, https://docs.lambda.ai/public-cloud/billing/).", "priceSummary": "Pay per use", "where": "hosted", "x402": { "level": "no", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": null, "popularity": { "githubStars": null, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": null, "asOf": "2026-09-30" }, "docsUrl": "https://docs.lambda.ai/public-cloud/on-demand/", "openapi": "https://docs.lambda.ai/api/cloud/spec.json", "capabilities": [ "compute.gpu", "compute.containers" ], "tags": [ "hosted", "usage-priced", "openapi", "enterprise" ], "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 50, "grade": "D", "agentReady": false, "rank": 695, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 14, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 63, "maintenance": 5, "payments": 20, "reliability": 50, "schema": 69, "security": 60, "transparency": 58 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-01" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "H100 SXM at $3.99 and B200 at $6.69 an hour with per-minute billing. No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated.", "bestFor": "Agents or pipelines that need a whole GPU machine with SSH for hours, such as training or batch jobs, and will manage the lifecycle themselves.", "strengths": [ "H100 SXM at $3.99 and B200 at $6.69 an hour with per-minute billing", "OpenAPI 3.1 spec with documented error codes, a `suggestion` field and cursor pagination", "Audit events endpoint filterable by time and resource type", "Published rate limits, one request a second and one launch every 12 seconds", "Trust portal with SOC 2 Type 2 and four ISO certifications, and a named subprocessor list" ], "weaknesses": [ "No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated", "Ten status incidents in two months, including a two-day regional outage in August 2026", "No changelog, no llms.txt and no official SDK", "API keys have no scopes and launch has no idempotency key", "security.txt expired on 1 June 2026 and no free tier" ], "agentNotes": [ "Call `GET /instance-types` first and read `regions_with_capacity_available` before trying to launch", "Space launch calls 12 seconds apart; a sixth in a minute returns 429 with `global/rate-limited`", "Branch on the error `code`, not the `message` or `suggestion`, which Lambda says may change", "List instances before retrying a failed launch, since there's no idempotency key and a retry can start a second machine", "Terminate the instance in a `finally` block; billing runs by the minute until you do" ], "metrics": { "kind": "remote", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 2, "avgRating": 3, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "D", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 50 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 63, "maintenance": 5, "payments": 20, "reliability": 50, "schema": 69, "security": 60, "transparency": 48 }, "provenanceScore": 67 }, "connect": { "http": "curl \"https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1/instance-types\" -H \"Authorization: Bearer $LAMBDA_API_KEY\"" }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/compute.gpu", "tool": "https://letme.dev/lambda" }, "area": "models", "unitPrices": [ { "item": "H100 SXM 80 GB", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 3.99, "note": "Billed per minute" }, { "item": "B200 180 GB", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 6.69 }, { "item": "A100 SXM 80 GB", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 2.79 }, { "item": "A100 SXM 40 GB", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 1.99 }, { "item": "Tesla V100 16 GB", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 0.79 }, { "item": "HGX B200 1-Click Cluster, 16 GPUs", "unit": "gpu-hour", "usd": 9.86, "note": "Two-week to one-year commitment; $8.87 at 256 GPUs or more" } ], "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Lambda, Inc.", "domain": "lambda.ai", "domainRegistered": "", "domainNote": "Lambda moved from lambdalabs.com, registered 2008-05-29, to lambda.ai. The .ai registry's RDAP server rate-limited our lookup of the new domain.", "endpointOnVendorDomain": true, "terms": "https://lambda.ai/legal/terms-of-service", "privacy": "https://lambda.ai/legal/privacy-policy", "statusPage": "https://status.lambda.ai", "changelog": "", "securityTxt": "expired", "checked": "2026-09-30", "notes": [ "Terms dated August 2025 and the privacy policy of 1 January 2026 name Lambda, Inc., 2510 Zanker Road, San Jose, California.", "The API runs on cloud.lambda.ai, a subdomain of the vendor domain.", "security.txt expired 2026-06-01 and has no Policy field.", "No public changelog found for the cloud. The OpenAPI spec reports version 1.10.0." ], "score": 67 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda.json", "live": { "slug": "lambda", "probe": { "target": "https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1", "method": "get", "lastAt": "2026-10-09T10:14:18.56307767Z", "lastOk": true, "lastStatus": 403, "lastMs": 702, "lastNote": "asks for credentials", "authRequired": true, "uptime24h": 100, "uptime30d": 99.95, "p50ms24h": 603, "p95ms24h": 901, "samples24h": 260, "samples30d": 2093, "days": [ { "date": "2026-10-01", "probes": 109, "ok": 109 }, { "date": "2026-10-02", "probes": 248, "ok": 248 }, { "date": "2026-10-03", "probes": 271, "ok": 271 }, { "date": "2026-10-04", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-05", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-06", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-07", "probes": 272, "ok": 271 }, { "date": "2026-10-08", "probes": 268, "ok": 268 }, { "date": "2026-10-09", "probes": 109, "ok": 109 } ] }, "vendorStatus": { "page": "https://status.lambda.ai", "indicator": "none", "summary": "All Systems Operational", "checkedAt": "2026-10-09T10:11:03.225933429Z" }, "securityTxt": { "url": "https://lambda.ai/.well-known/security.txt", "state": "expired", "expires": "2026-06-01T16:00:00Z", "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T15:38:48.494823468Z" }, "domain": { "domain": "lambda.ai", "registered": "2017-12-16", "source": "https://rdap.identitydigital.services/rdap/domain/lambda.ai", "checkedAt": "2026-10-04T13:04:37.89683091Z" }, "pages": [ { "url": "https://lambda.ai/pricing", "kind": "pricing", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:21:12.626677302Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "ad7e156559d1" }, { "url": "https://lambda.ai/legal/privacy-policy", "kind": "privacy", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:21:08.557293205Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "921eec75dd83" }, { "url": "https://lambda.ai/legal/terms-of-service", "kind": "terms", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:21:10.609958388Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "40e40aee2e7c" } ], "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T10:14:18.56307767Z" } }, "facts": [ { "a": "HTTP API", "b": "HTTP API", "name": "Kind" }, { "a": "Hugging Face, Inc.", "b": "Lambda", "name": "Vendor" }, { "a": "https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud", "b": "https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1", "name": "Hosted endpoint" }, { "a": "HTTP", "b": "HTTP", "name": "Transports" }, { "a": "OAuth or key", "b": "API key", "name": "Auth" }, { "a": "Pay per use", "b": "Pay per use", "name": "Pricing" }, { "a": "not published", "b": "$9.86 per GPU-hour", "name": "Price for compute gpu" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "x402" }, { "a": "Proprietary service under the Hugging Face Terms of Service. The `huggingface_hub` Python client and CLI are Apache-2.0", "b": "none", "name": "Licence" }, { "a": "19", "b": "none", "name": "Tools exposed" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "Read-only variant documented" }, { "a": "yes", "b": "no", "name": "llms.txt" }, { "a": "2026-10-08", "b": "none", "name": "Last release" }, { "a": "2022-09-15", "b": "2025-08-01", "name": "Terms last updated" }, { "a": "2023-03-28", "b": "2026-01-01", "name": "Privacy policy last updated" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Customer content may train models" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Terms restrict automated access" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "yes", "name": "Terms restrict benchmarking" }, { "a": "yes", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Terms or service can change without notice" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "yes", "name": "Arbitration or class-action waiver" }, { "a": "60M PyPI/wk", "b": "none", "name": "Popularity" }, { "a": "none", "b": "3/5 (2)", "name": "Agent reviews" } ], "faq": [ { "answer": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.", "question": "Which is better for AI agents, Hugging Face Inference Endpoints or Lambda Cloud?" }, { "answer": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Lambda Cloud needs an API key.", "question": "Do Hugging Face Inference Endpoints and Lambda Cloud need an API key?" }, { "answer": "Yes. Hugging Face Inference Endpoints has a hosted endpoint at https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud and Lambda Cloud at https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1.", "question": "Can an agent call Hugging Face Inference Endpoints and Lambda Cloud without installing anything?" } ], "goodFor": [ { "aheadOn": [ "Reliability, 63 against 50", "Security \u0026 auth, 83 against 60", "Maintenance \u0026 community, 80 against 5", "Transparency \u0026 trust, 68 against 58" ], "also": null, "goodFor": "Teams whose models already live on the Hugging Face Hub and who want a dedicated endpoint on a named cloud and region with standard open-source engines.", "slug": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "watchFor": "No free tier. The docs require a payment method and credits, and replicas are billed while initialising as well as running" }, { "aheadOn": null, "also": null, "goodFor": "Agents or pipelines that need a whole GPU machine with SSH for hours, such as training or batch jobs, and will manage the lifecycle themselves.", "slug": "lambda", "watchFor": "No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated" } ], "job": { "capability": "compute.gpu", "name": "Compute gpu" }, "others": [ { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "title": "Baseten vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-lambda.json", "title": "Baseten vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "title": "Beam vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-lambda.json", "title": "Beam vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "title": "Cerebrium vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-lambda.json", "title": "Cerebrium vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json", "title": "CoreWeave vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-lambda.json", "title": "CoreWeave vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-hyperbolic.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Hyperbolic", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-hyperbolic" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-koyeb.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Koyeb", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-koyeb" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-modal.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Modal", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-modal" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Nebius AI Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-nebius-ai-cloud" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-northflank.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Northflank", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-northflank" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-replicate-deploy.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Replicate Deployments", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-replicate-deploy" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-runpod.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Runpod", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-runpod" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-thunder-compute.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Thunder Compute", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-thunder-compute" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-vast-ai.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Vast.ai", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-vast-ai" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-verda.json", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Verda", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-verda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperbolic-vs-lambda.json", "title": "Hyperbolic vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperbolic-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-lambda.json", "title": "Koyeb vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-lambda" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-modal.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Modal", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-modal" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Nebius AI Cloud", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-nebius-ai-cloud" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-northflank.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Northflank", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-northflank" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-replicate-deploy.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Replicate Deployments", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-replicate-deploy" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-runpod.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Runpod", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-runpod" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-thunder-compute.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Thunder Compute", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-thunder-compute" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-vast-ai.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Vast.ai", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-vast-ai" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-verda.json", "title": "Lambda Cloud vs Verda", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-verda" } ], "scores": [ { "by": 13, "edge": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 63, "key": "reliability", "lambda": 50, "name": "Reliability", "weight": 16 }, { "key": "performance", "name": "Performance", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "by": 4, "edge": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 73, "key": "schema", "lambda": 69, "name": "Schema \u0026 documentation", "weight": 13 }, { "by": 1, "edge": "lambda", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 62, "key": "ergonomics", "lambda": 63, "name": "Agent ergonomics", "weight": 13 }, { "by": 23, "edge": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 83, "key": "security", "lambda": 60, "name": "Security \u0026 auth", "weight": 14 }, { "by": 0, "edge": "", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 20, "key": "payments", "lambda": 20, "name": "Payments \u0026 pricing", "weight": 10 }, { "key": "tasks", "name": "Task success", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "by": 75, "edge": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 80, "key": "maintenance", "lambda": 5, "name": "Maintenance \u0026 community", "weight": 7 }, { "by": 10, "edge": "hugging-face-inference-endpoints", "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": 68, "key": "transparency", "lambda": 58, "name": "Transparency \u0026 trust", "weight": 7 } ], "summary": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do compute gpu.", "verdicts": { "hugging-face-inference-endpoints": "OAuth scopes separate reading endpoints from writing them, both OpenAPI documents are public, and the unauthenticated `/v2/provider` route lists every instance with its hourly price. An account needs a payment method and credits before the first deployment, no rate limits or SLA were found for the management API, and the docs price table disagrees with the live list in places.", "lambda": "H100 SXM at $3.99 and B200 at $6.69 an hour with per-minute billing. No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated." } }, "kind": "anchor.page", "links": { "api": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json", "html": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda", "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.json", "llms": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt", "markdown": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.md", "slim": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.min.md" }, "markdown": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do compute gpu.\n\n- Hugging Face Inference Endpoints: grade B, 64.5/100, rank #314 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json\n- Lambda Cloud: grade D, 50/100, rank #695 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lambda.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lambda.json\n\n## Which one, for what\n\n### Hugging Face Inference Endpoints (B)\n\nGood for: Teams whose models already live on the Hugging Face Hub and who want a dedicated endpoint on a named cloud and region with standard open-source engines.\n\nAhead on:\n- Reliability, 63 against 50\n- Security \u0026 auth, 83 against 60\n- Maintenance \u0026 community, 80 against 5\n- Transparency \u0026 trust, 68 against 58\n\nWatch for: No free tier. The docs require a payment method and credits, and replicas are billed while initialising as well as running\n\n### Lambda Cloud (D)\n\nGood for: Agents or pipelines that need a whole GPU machine with SSH for hours, such as training or batch jobs, and will manage the lifecycle themselves.\n\nWatch for: No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated\n\n\n## Score by category\n\n| Category | Weight | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints | Lambda Cloud | Edge |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 63 | 50 | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints +13 |\n| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Schema \u0026 documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 69 | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints +4 |\n| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 63 | Lambda Cloud +1 |\n| Security \u0026 auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 83 | 60 | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints +23 |\n| Payments \u0026 pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |\n| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Maintenance \u0026 community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 5 | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints +75 |\n| Transparency \u0026 trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 58 | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints +10 |\n| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |\n| **Total** | | **64.5 · B** | **50 · D** | |\n\n## Facts side by side\n\n| Fact | Hugging Face Inference Endpoints | Lambda Cloud |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |\n| Vendor | Hugging Face, Inc. | Lambda |\n| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud` | `https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1` |\n| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |\n| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |\n| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |\n| Price for compute gpu | not published | $9.86 per GPU-hour |\n| x402 | no | no |\n| Licence | Proprietary service under the Hugging Face Terms of Service. The `huggingface_hub` Python client and CLI are Apache-2.0 | none |\n| Tools exposed | 19 | none |\n| Read-only variant documented | no | no |\n| llms.txt | yes | no |\n| Last release | 2026-10-08 | none |\n| Terms last updated | 2022-09-15 | 2025-08-01 |\n| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-03-28 | 2026-01-01 |\n| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |\n| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |\n| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |\n| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |\n| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |\n| Popularity | 60M PyPI/wk | none |\n| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |\n\n## Verdicts\n\n**Hugging Face Inference Endpoints.** OAuth scopes separate reading endpoints from writing them, both OpenAPI documents are public, and the unauthenticated `/v2/provider` route lists every instance with its hourly price. An account needs a payment method and credits before the first deployment, no rate limits or SLA were found for the management API, and the docs price table disagrees with the live list in places.\n\n**Lambda Cloud.** H100 SXM at $3.99 and B200 at $6.69 an hour with per-minute billing. No scale to zero, autoscaling or endpoints; an idle VM bills until terminated.\n\n## Before you call either\n\n### Hugging Face Inference Endpoints\n\n1. Call `GET https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud/v2/provider` first and pick an instance whose `status` is `available`. The docs table lists types the API marks deprecated or not available\n2. Send `X-Scale-Up-Timeout: 600` on requests to an endpoint that scales to zero, or handle 503 while the first replica starts\n3. Set `scaleToZeroTimeout` yourself. The docs give a default of 1 hour and the OpenAPI document says 15 minutes\n4. Pause or delete an endpoint when the job is done. Billing covers every minute a replica is initialising or running\n5. Give the agent a fine-grained token or the `read-endpoints` scope unless it must deploy. Endpoints are private by default and take the same Hugging Face token as a bearer\n\n### Lambda Cloud\n\n1. Call `GET /instance-types` first and read `regions_with_capacity_available` before trying to launch\n2. Space launch calls 12 seconds apart; a sixth in a minute returns 429 with `global/rate-limited`\n3. Branch on the error `code`, not the `message` or `suggestion`, which Lambda says may change\n4. List instances before retrying a failed launch, since there's no idempotency key and a retry can start a second machine\n5. Terminate the instance in a `finally` block; billing runs by the minute until you do\n\n## Questions\n\n### Which is better for AI agents, Hugging Face Inference Endpoints or Lambda Cloud?\n\nHugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.\n\n### Do Hugging Face Inference Endpoints and Lambda Cloud need an API key?\n\nHugging Face Inference Endpoints takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Lambda Cloud needs an API key.\n\n### Can an agent call Hugging Face Inference Endpoints and Lambda Cloud without installing anything?\n\nYes. Hugging Face Inference Endpoints has a hosted endpoint at https://api.endpoints.huggingface.cloud and Lambda Cloud at https://cloud.lambda.ai/api/v1.\n\n\n## For agents\n\n- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.min.md\n- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {\"a\": \"hugging-face-inference-endpoints\", \"b\": \"lambda\"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare hugging-face-inference-endpoints lambda`\n- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hugging-face-inference-endpoints.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lambda.json\n\n## Other comparisons with Hugging Face Inference Endpoints or Lambda Cloud\n\n- [Baseten vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)\n- [Baseten vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-lambda.md)\n- [Beam vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)\n- [Beam vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-lambda.md)\n- [Cerebrium vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)\n- [Cerebrium vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-lambda.md)\n- [CoreWeave vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)\n- [CoreWeave vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-lambda.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Hyperbolic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-hyperbolic.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-koyeb.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-modal.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-northflank.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-replicate-deploy.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-runpod.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-thunder-compute.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-vast-ai.md)\n- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-verda.md)\n- [Hyperbolic vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperbolic-vs-lambda.md)\n- [Koyeb vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-lambda.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-modal.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-northflank.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-replicate-deploy.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-runpod.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-thunder-compute.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-vast-ai.md)\n- [Lambda Cloud vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-verda.md)\n", "meta": { "attribution": "Anchor Terminal (https://www.anchorterminal.com)", "docs": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/docs/", "generatedAt": "2026-10-09", "license": "CC-BY-4.0", "method": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/", "methodology": "0.4", "openapi": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/openapi.json", "preview": false, "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run" }, "page": { "breadcrumbs": [ { "name": "Home", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/" }, { "name": "Compare", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/" }, { "name": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Lambda Cloud", "url": "" } ], "description": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints scores 64.5 (B) on agent readiness against Lambda Cloud's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.", "facts": [ "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints B 64.5", "Lambda Cloud D 50", "scores" ], "h1": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Lambda Cloud", "image": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/assets/og/compare-hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda.png", "path": "/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda", "published": "2026-10-01", "section": "tools", "title": "Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Lambda Cloud for AI agents", "toc": null, "updated": "2026-10-09", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-lambda" }, "tokens": { "markdown": 2700, "slim": 680 }, "version": 1 }