Product / UX / UI & API

HuggingChat / chat-ui

SvelteKit chat interface built and maintained by Hugging Face, and the codebase behind HuggingChat at huggingface.co/chat. It routes across open-weights models from several inference providers, exposes an OpenAI-compatible API, supports MCP tools and multimodal input, and has first-class support for text-generation-inference endpoints.

The original HuggingChat was retired on 1 July 2025 and relaunched as HuggingChat Omni, which routes across providers rather than serving one endpoint. Verified 2026-08-13 via the huggingface/chat-ui repository and huggingface.co/chat.

Openness

5 high confidence

5.0

license: Apache-2.0(OSI)
source: public
core-gated: ungated

Fully OSI (Apache-2.0); the public codebase is exactly what powers the hosted HuggingChat, self-hostable end to end.

https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui recorded 2026-08-13
Apache-2.0; 'open source codebase powering HuggingChat'; v0.10.0

Adoption

3 medium confidence

3.0

Hosted HuggingChat served over 1M users and over 100k assistants across its lifetime before it was sunset, and has since relaunched as HuggingChat Omni, live again at hf.co/chat with 132 open models in the picker. The chat-ui repository itself is a modest 10,885 stars and 1,659 forks, the self-host base being niche. Level 3 rests on the disclosed lifetime user reach of the hosted product, and the discontinuity and relaunch lower confidence. That figure is a vendor statement at one remove rather than a first-party page: neither the sunset article nor the primary sunset announcement carries a user count, and the number traces to Victor Mustar, Hugging Face's Head of Product, on X - "HuggingChat has supported over 20 open-source models ... helped more than 1 million users, and powered over 100,000 assistants" - relayed by trade press. It is still the only reach figure anyone has published for the hosted product.

https://www.thelettertwo.com/2025/07/01/hugging-face-ends-huggingchat-teases-more-integrated-future/ recorded 2026-08-14
"HuggingChat has supported over 20 open-source models ... helped more than 1 million users, and powered over 100,000 assistants", attributed in the piece to Victor Mustar, Head of Product at Hugging Face, posted on X. A vendor statement relayed by trade press, not a first-party HF page.
https://api.github.com/repos/huggingface/chat-ui recorded 2026-08-14
GitHub API for huggingface/chat-ui - 10,885 stars, 1,659 forks, 97 watchers, Apache-2.0. The self-host base, countable; the hosted product publishes no user count.
https://huggingface.co/chat recorded 2026-06-04
live HuggingChat Omni interface, Omni router, 123+ open source models, MCP
https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/startup-news/2025/hugging-face-closes-huggingchat-to-make-way-for-next-generation-ai-tools recorded 2026-06-04
sunset write-up. Carries no user or assistant figure, so it never supported the reach this band was placed on.

Capability

3 medium confidence

3.0

Good model breadth, smart routing and MCP support, but the rebuilt v0.10 deliberately stripped the RAG and provider integrations present in the legacy branch, so the self-host feature surface is leaner than Open WebUI or LibreChat. Mid-tier for the category, one step below Open WebUI. The model picker now offers 132 open models.

https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui recorded 2026-08-13
OpenAI-compatible API, MCP tools, multimodal, Omni routing; legacy provider integrations + GGUF discovery removed
https://huggingface.co/chat recorded 2026-08-13
Omni router selecting among 123+ open models, MCP enabled

Verified 2026-08-13