# Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Together AI Inference (slim)

> Together AI Inference scores 67.8 (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/hugging-face-inference-providers-vs-together-inference.md (~6,550 tokens) · this version ~2,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-providers-vs-together-inference.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-providers-vs-together-inference
- 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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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.

- Hugging Face Inference Providers: C 54, rank #926 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hugging-face-inference-providers.min.md
- Together AI Inference: B 67.8, rank #302 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/together-inference.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 70; Maintenance & community, 80 against 65. Also No incidents deducted, where Together AI Inference loses 3 points for them.
- Together AI Inference, good 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.

| Category | Hugging Face Inference Providers | Together AI Inference |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 62 | 93 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 58 | 85 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 79 | 70 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 65 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 74 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Hugging Face Inference Providers | Together AI Inference |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model router | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Hugging Face, Inc. | Together Computer, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://router.huggingface.co/v1` | `https://api.together.ai/v1` |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Paid |
| 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 hosted service. The official Python SDK is Apache-2.0; served models retain their own licences. |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-23 |
| Terms last updated | 2022-09-15 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-03-28 | no date given |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 483k npm/wk, 71.5M PyPI/wk | 10 stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- 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).)