HuggingChat

Hugging Face's free chat app for open-source models, with automatic model routing.

FreeOpen sourceSelf-hostableAI chatbots and assistants

Verified facts: 4 of 4
Alternatives ranked: 5
Approved reviews: 0
Visits sent from here: 0

About HuggingChat

HuggingChat is Hugging Face's chat app for open-source AI models. Instead of one house model it offers a long list of open models from labs such as Meta, Mistral, Qwen, DeepSeek and others, and an Omni mode that automatically picks a suitable model for each request. It is a good way to try new open models soon after release without installing anything. Hugging Face has also added ML Intern, a mode aimed at machine-learning tasks across papers, datasets and the Hub. The app is built on Hugging Face's open-source Chat UI, which you can deploy yourself and point at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Compared with commercial assistants it has fewer polished extras and depends on Hugging Face's inference capacity, and model choice can be overwhelming. It is free to use with a Hugging Face account, and Hugging Face's paid PRO account adds more inference credits across its services. It runs in the browser.

Best for: People curious about open-source models who want to try them free in a browser.

What works

Free access to many open models
Omni mode picks a model for you
Underlying Chat UI is open source and self-hostable

Why people leave

Fewer polished features than commercial assistants
Long model list can overwhelm newcomers
Speed depends on Hugging Face's shared capacity

Top HuggingChat alternatives

See all 5

1
Open WebUI
Self-hosted interface for local and cloud models with more admin features.
66.5
2
LM Studio
Run the same open models locally on your own computer.
62.6
3
Poe
One subscription for both open and commercial models.
59.6
4
Duck.ai
Free, anonymous chat with a few open and commercial models.
57.2
5
Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)
Polished free assistant from Mistral, one of the main open-model labs.
55.3

Why people left HuggingChat

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HuggingChat: common questions

Is HuggingChat free?

Yes, HuggingChat is free to use.

Is HuggingChat open source?

Yes. The source code is on GitHub at huggingface/chat-ui. You can also run it on your own server.

What platforms does HuggingChat run on?

HuggingChat is available for Web and Self-hosted.

What are the best alternatives to HuggingChat?

The highest-ranked HuggingChat alternatives right now are Open WebUI, LM Studio and Poe. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.

See all 5 HuggingChat alternatives

HuggingChat facts

4 of 4 verified

Models: Open-source models; Checked Oct 25, 2026huggingface.co(opens source in a new tab); “Welcome to HuggingChat, the chat app powered by open source AI models.”
Model routing: Omni picks a model per request; Checked Oct 25, 2026huggingface.co(opens source in a new tab); “Omni automatically picks the best AI model to give you optimal answers depending on your requests.”
Open source: Chat UI; Checked Oct 25, 2026huggingface.co(opens source in a new tab); “Chat UI Open source chat interface”
Self-hosting: Yes, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint; Checked Oct 25, 2026huggingface.co(opens source in a new tab); “Chat UI connects to any OpenAI-compatible API endpoint”