What HuggingChat is
HuggingChat is Hugging Face's chat portal for open models. It runs community models such as Llama, Mixtral, Gemma and Phi with text, code, image generation, web search and PDF parsing, and lets users create custom assistants with their own system prompts.
What you can do with it
- Compare open model behaviour
- Build a custom assistant
- Draft and code with open models
- Search the web in chat
Who it is for
- Open-source AI enthusiasts
- Developers
- Users avoiding closed ecosystems
What to watch out for
- Open models vary in capability; expect weaker performance than frontier closed models on some tasks
- Community assistants vary in quality
- Usage limits apply on free infrastructure
- Conversations may be used to improve open models per HF terms
Pros & cons
✓ What we like
- Rare multi-open-model access for free
- Custom assistants
- Open ecosystem alignment
! What to watch out for
- Open model capability gaps
- Usage limits
- Terms on data usage
Alternatives
Similar tools worth a look, and why.
Replicate
Choose Replicate when you want runnable open models behind one clean API rather than a research-plus-hosting ecosystem.
Read our reviewOpenAI API
Pick OpenAI when you prefer a fully managed frontier model and want to skip open-model operations entirely.
Read our reviewFAQ
What is HuggingChat?
Hugging Face's chat portal running multiple open-source community models.
Can I customise assistants?
Yes. Custom system prompts create tailored assistants.
Who suits it?
Users who prefer open models and the Hugging Face ecosystem.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-09
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