Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Together AI Inference

Together AI Inference scores 67.8 (B) on agent readiness against Hugging Face Inference Providers's 54 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Hugging Face Inference Providers leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 830 models comparisons

Which one, for what

Hugging Face Inference Providers C

Best 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 70
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 65

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Together AI Inference loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No rate limits, 429 behaviour or error responses documented for the router

Together AI Inference B

Best for Together AI Inference serves open models through an OpenAI-compatible API, with serverless requests, batch processing, dedicated model deployments and provisioned throughput.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 25
  • Schema & documentation, 93 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 85 against 58

Watch for

A $15 credit purchase is required before platform access; no free trial

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reliability Together AI Inference +50

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.

Together AI Inference 75

Graded as listed, on the hosted API lines. Public Better Stack status page at status.together.ai with a component for each serverless model plus the website and playground (20). The page shows 90 daily ticks per component, read on 1 November 2026 for 4 August to 1 November, and no incident was posted in that time (the feed's newest items are maintenance windows in April and July 2026). Monitors record downtime on single models, the longest Kimi K3 for 7 hours 18 minutes on 22 August and Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B for 5 hours 34 minutes on 13 August, and on the busiest days five of about 20 monitored models were down for up to 1 hour 40 minutes (14 October) or about 20 minutes (1 September). Each hit one model or a subset of the catalogue, so the record reads as minor incidents only (20). The current serverless page gives no numeric general request ceiling (0). Explicit 429 and 503 backoff guidance (15). Provisioned throughput has a published 99% eligible-request commitment (10). Serverless inference is generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 75.

Schema & documentation Together AI Inference +31

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).

Together AI Inference 93

Public OpenAPI 3.1 (25), llms.txt and Markdown docs (10), endpoint and model-capability guidance (16 of 20), typed inputs and constraints (13 of 15), examples and documented errors (14 of 15), and versioned endpoints with a dated changelog (15).

Agent ergonomics Together AI Inference +27

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).

Together AI Inference 85

Compact model API with bounded output (25). Token controls, streaming, structured outputs and batch options (20). Actionable error documentation (20). Transient retry guidance but no general inference deduplication guarantee found (5 of 20). Official Python and TypeScript SDKs and defaults (15).

Maintenance & community Hugging Face Inference Providers +15

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).

Together AI Inference 65

Graded as listed, on the tool lines. Changelog entries on 22 and 23 October 2026 (Python SDK 3.0, TypeScript SDK 1.0, MiniMax M3.1 Flash on serverless and post-training) (30). 43 dated changelog days and 16 Python SDK tags from 3 August, v2.33.1 to v3.0.0 (20). Support responsiveness not tested (0). Official Python and TypeScript SDKs, both given new majors on 22 October (15). Dependency and CI health not audited (0).

Security & auth Hugging Face Inference Providers +9

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).

Together AI Inference 70

Project-scoped, revocable keys with optional expiry and rotation guidance (30). Project boundaries but keys can access all project resources and lack per-key spend limits (10 of 20). No inference prompt-injection mitigation established (0). Per-key cost and usage attribution (15). Published security.txt with a future expiry and HackerOne disclosure route (15 of 20).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHugging Face Inference ProvidersTogether AI InferenceEdge
Reliability16%202575Together AI Inference +50
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26293Together AI Inference +31
Agent ergonomics13%16.25885Together AI Inference +27
Security & auth14%17.57970Hugging Face Inference Providers +9
Payments & pricing10%12.52020even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88065Hugging Face Inference Providers +15
Transparency & trust7%8.87174Together AI Inference +3
Negative events≤150-3
TotalC 54/100B 67.8/100

Facts side by side

FactHugging Face Inference ProvidersTogether AI Inference
KindModel routerHTTP API
VendorHugging Face, Inc.Together Computer, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://router.huggingface.co/v1https://api.together.ai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary 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 MITProprietary hosted service. The official Python SDK is Apache-2.0; served models retain their own licences.
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-292026-10-23
Terms last updated2022-09-15no date given
Privacy policy last updated2023-03-28no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity483k npm/wk, 71.5M PyPI/wk10 stars
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Hugging Face Inference Providers

One Hugging Face token reaches open models on 18 partner providers at the providers' own prices, with a public model list that shows each provider's price, context and tool support. Router rate limits, error responses and its own status component were not found in the reviewed documentation, and free accounts have had no included credits since 7 October 2026.

Together AI Inference

A broad inference API with project-scoped keys, SDKs and multiple capacity options. Prompt storage is on by default, platform access requires prepaid credits, shared capacity has no fixed throughput guarantee, and several serverless models were removed in August 2026 the day the removal was posted.

Before you call either

Hugging Face Inference Providers

  1. Read https://router.huggingface.co/v1/models before choosing a provider; it shows price, context and supports_tools per provider
  2. Pin a provider with model:<provider> when tool calling or structured output matters, since support varies by provider
  3. Use a fine-grained token with only the Inference Providers permission, and send X-HF-Bill-To to bill an organisation
  4. Back off on 429 without assuming a Retry-After header, since none is documented for the router

Together AI Inference

  1. Create a project-scoped key and set TOGETHER_API_KEY. Avoid deprecated legacy keys.
  2. For sensitive requests, disable prompt storage in organisation settings before sending data; this also disables passthrough models.
  3. Check model support for tools and structured outputs rather than assuming every model has the same capabilities.
  4. Back off on 429 and 503 responses. Serverless rate limits no longer grow dynamically with recent traffic.
  5. Check the deprecation schedule before choosing a model. Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B leaves serverless on 4 November and MiniMax M3 and Inkling on 6 November 2026.
  6. Pin the SDK major version. Python SDK 3.0 and TypeScript SDK 1.0 (22 October 2026) drop /v1 from the base URL and the beta paths

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Hugging Face Inference Providers or Together AI Inference?

Together AI Inference scores 67.8 (B) on agent readiness against Hugging Face Inference Providers's 54 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Hugging Face Inference Providers leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.

Do Hugging Face Inference Providers and Together AI Inference need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Hugging Face Inference Providers and Together AI Inference without installing anything?

Yes. Hugging Face Inference Providers has a hosted endpoint at https://router.huggingface.co/v1 and Together AI Inference at https://api.together.ai/v1.

Other comparisons with Hugging Face Inference Providers or Together AI Inference

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.