# Hugging Face Inference Providers vs SiliconFlow (slim)

> Hugging Face Inference Providers scores 54 (C) to SiliconFlow's 42.9 (E) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- 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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Hugging Face Inference Providers scores 54 (C) on agent readiness against SiliconFlow's 42.9 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. SiliconFlow leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do llm inference.

- Hugging Face Inference Providers: C 54, rank #926 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-providers.min.md
- SiliconFlow: E 42.9, rank #1266 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/siliconflow.min.md
- 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 39; Maintenance & community, 80 against 37; Transparency & trust, 71 against 52. Also No incidents deducted, where SiliconFlow loses 3 points for them.
- SiliconFlow, good for Agents that want recent open-weight chat models, plus image, video and speech, behind one OpenAI-style key at low per-token prices, and can live without a status page or SLA. Ahead on Reliability, 33 against 25; Payments & pricing, 35 against 20.

| Category | Hugging Face Inference Providers | SiliconFlow |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 33 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 62 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 58 | 60 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 79 | 39 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 37 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 52 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Hugging Face Inference Providers | SiliconFlow |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model router | Model API |
| Vendor | Hugging Face, Inc. | SiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://router.huggingface.co/v1` | `https://api.siliconflow.com/v1` |
| Licence | 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 | Proprietary service under the SiliconFlow Terms of Use |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-09-14 |
| Terms last updated | 2022-09-15 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-03-28 | no date given |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 483k npm/wk, 71.5M PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Hugging Face Inference Providers +43: 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).); SiliconFlow 37 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Model reading, per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Hy4-preview is listed as released on 14 September 2026, 52 days before this check, and no later model or API change was recorded; blog post dates record no API change (20). No notice period is stated. Six removal notices from 31 December 2025 to 11 June 2026 are dated the day of removal, and two in March 2026 gave six and seven days (2 of 12). The release notes record about 60 model ids removed in ten notices over the last twelve months (2 of 8). The release notes stop at 11 June 2026 while nine chat models were added afterwards. Support is by email and Discord (6 of 15). Replies in the support channels were not examined (2 of 10). No official SDK. The `langchain-siliconflow` repository in the vendor's GitHub organisation was last changed on 12 December 2025 (version 0.2.3), confirmed from a clone on 5 November (3 of 15). The API description and two guides are out of date (2 of 10). 20+2+2+6+2+3+2 = 37.)
- Security & auth, Hugging Face Inference Providers +40: 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).); SiliconFlow 39 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Model reading. Bearer keys created in the console. No scopes, expiry, per-key limits or rotation are documented, and deletion of a key was not confirmed because the console was not read (15 of 30). The terms say Interaction Data is used only to supply the service and is not used or disclosed without authorisation. No statement on model training was found (12 of 20). The terms say there is no obligation to store Interaction Data. No retention period or zero-retention option is stated, and clause 5.11 allows communications to be recorded and passed to the authorities (6 of 15). The release note of 26 March 2026 describes usage and cost breakdowns and invoice export, and the pricing FAQ says monthly spending limits can be set. No audit log was found (6 of 15). No security.txt (404), disclosure policy, bug bounty or named certification was found on the pages read. The product introduction says the service complies with industry standards and names none (0 of 20). 15+12+6+6+0 = 39.)
- Transparency & trust, Hugging Face Inference Providers +19: Hugging Face Inference Providers 71 (Closed service under Terms of Service that name Inference Providers, with an Apache-2.0 Python client and an MIT JavaScript client (20). The security page and the docs agree on no training, no stored bodies and 30-day logs, but the privacy policy dates from 28 March 2023 and each provider's own data policy governs the rest (18 of 30). No deprecation policy found. Provider support changes and the 7 October removal of free credits are dated only in the docs repository history (5 of 20). The privacy policy lists 11 subprocessors with countries per the Inference Endpoints check, and the docs name every provider a request can reach, though not where each runs (15 of 20).); SiliconFlow 52 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Closed service. The Terms of Use name the entity, Singapore law and SIAC arbitration. They also grant a licence "for in Singapore" and forbid use for any commercial purposes, which sits oddly with a paid API (10 of 30). The terms and the privacy policy agree that Interaction Data is processed on the customer's instructions with no obligation to store it. No retention period or DPA was found, and the privacy policy keeps drafting brackets around several values (12 of 30). Dated removal notices in the release notes, with no written policy or notice period (8 of 20). Stripe is named as payment processor and other providers only by type. Data may be handled within or outside Singapore, with no locations given (4 of 20). 10+12+8+4 = 34.)
- Payments & pricing, SiliconFlow +15: Hugging Face Inference Providers 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token prices for every model and provider published without a login in the router's /v1/models and on model pages (20). No free tier since 7 October 2026, when free users lost their included monthly credits; PRO's $2.00 of credits needs a subscription (0). Sign-up, token creation and credit purchase are browser steps (0).); SiliconFlow 35 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. No machine payment protocol (0). Per-token, per-image and per-video prices on the pricing page, read without a login, such as DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash at $0.15 in and $0.60 out per 1M tokens (20). $1 in free credits for a new account. Whether a card is needed was not established, so this line takes 15 of 20. A person signs up in a browser with a Google or GitHub account, and no key API was found (0). 0+20+15+0 = 35.)
- Reliability, SiliconFlow +8: 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.); SiliconFlow 33 (SiliconFlow's Terms of Use bar spiders, robots, scrapers and crawlers on the Platform, so its sites were not re-read on 5 November. Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 5 November. Hosted reading. No status page is linked from the site, the docs index or any page read (0). With no page there is no incident record to read (5 of 30). Rate limits are published with numbers by spend tier, from 1,000 requests and 40,000 tokens a minute at L0 to 10,000 and 2,000,000 at L5, on a page served only in Chinese, with per-model figures left to the console (12 of 15). The 429 body is documented and names the limit reached, and the docs say to wait and retry. No `Retry-After` header, backoff figures or idempotency guidance were found (6 of 15). No SLA found. Clause 4.2 of the terms disclaims any uptime or availability commitment (0). The serverless API is generally available, and `/systemone` is marked alpha (10). 0+5+12+6+0+10 = 33.)