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The best Hugging Face alternative in 2026 is Off Grid AI, if you want to keep the model on your own device or hold your own key, with open-source code and no lock-in. The free apps run open models on your phone and computer, and Off Grid AI Boost is a flat-price API for open models. For a big download library, Ollama and ModelScope come next.
Boost is a pre-order now, API key by January 2027, so we rank it on what it promises. We haven’t used it as a customer.
We make Off Grid AI, so weigh that, and every price below links to its source.
See the free apps → · See the Boost plans →
Why people are looking
Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion on 2 September 2026 and expects to close in the first half of 2027 (SiliconANGLE, SEC 8-K). Nvidia says the Hub will stay open and won’t require its chips (Nvidia). Who sets its rules after closing hasn’t been announced. We cover what’s confirmed and what isn’t in what Nvidia’s CEO change and the Hugging Face deal mean for open models.
You probably don’t need to leave Hugging Face. You need a second place to get and run models, so one owner’s decision can’t stop your work.
The alternatives compared
Checked 16 November 2026 on each service’s own pages.
| Best for | Price | You keep the model or hold the key? | Open source? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Off Grid AI | Running open models on your own devices, plus a flat-price API | Apps free. Boost from $4.99 a month (cohort 1), pre-order now, API key by January 2027; limits not yet published | Apps: model on your device. Boost: your own key | Apps yes (MIT mobile, AGPL-3.0 desktop). Boost serving code will be open source |
| 2. Ollama | A local model runner with its own library, plus a cloud | Local free. Cloud Pro $20 a month with $60 of credit | Local: model on your computer. Cloud: your key | Yes, MIT |
| 3. ModelScope | Downloading open models, Qwen especially | Free to download | Model on your disk | Library yes, Apache 2.0 |
| 4. Kaggle Models | Downloading models and trying them in free notebooks | Free to download | Model on your disk | kagglehub library yes, Apache 2.0 |
| 5. Civitai | Image models: checkpoints and LoRAs | Browsing free. Memberships $10, $25 or $50 a month | Model on your disk, for downloadable models | No |
| 6. Replicate | Running models, including your own, behind an API | Per second of hardware or per output, e.g. H100 $5.49 an hour | Your key | Cog packaging tool yes |
| 7. DeepInfra | The cheapest per-token API we found for DeepSeek | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (1017) $0.098 in / $0.294 out per 1M tokens | Your key | No |
| 8. OpenRouter | One key for 600+ models | Each model’s price plus 5.5% on credits | Your key | No |
| 9. Together AI | A large per-token host with fine-tuning | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash $0.30 / $1.20 per 1M tokens | Your key | No |
GitHub Models isn’t in the table. GitHub retired it on 30 July 2026 (GitHub docs).
How we picked
We ranked on three things, in this order:
- You keep the model or hold the key. Either the weights sit on your own device, or you call an API with your own key and can switch.
- Open source. You can read the code that runs your model, and run it yourself.
- No lock-in. Leaving costs you little, because the model, the code or the API format comes with you.
We didn’t rank on model count. Hugging Face beats everyone here on that, and we say so below.
1. Off Grid AI
What it is. Two ways to own your open models. The free apps run models on your own phone and computer. Off Grid AI Boost is a hosted API for open models, for when you need more than your device can run.
The free apps. Off Grid AI Desktop runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, and Off Grid AI Mobile runs on iPhone and Android. They run text, vision and image models fully on your device, with no account. Your prompts stay there. Both apps are open source on GitHub, MIT on mobile and AGPL-3.0 on desktop. The model browser pulls from Hugging Face today, and both apps import a .gguf file you got anywhere else, like a copy you saved yourself.
Boost. Hosted inference for open models, including Qwen 3.8 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, on our own GPUs. One API key works for every model on Boost, at one fixed price with no per-token meter. We don’t keep your prompts or train on them. The serving code will be open source, so you’ll be able to move to your own hardware if you want to leave.
| Boost plan | Cohort 1 | Regular | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | $4.99 a month | $9.99 a month | Limits not yet published |
| B (recommended) | $9.99 a month | $19.99 a month | Limits not yet published |
| C | $49.99 a month | $99.99 a month | Limits not yet published |
| D | $99.99 a month | $199.99 a month | Limits not yet published |
Cohort 1 pays half for as long as they stay. Cohort 2 gets 25% off and cohort 3 gets 10% off. Yearly costs 10 months’ price, so you get two months free. More in a flat-price, private API for open models.
Best for. People who want their models on their own devices, and an API they can leave without rewriting anything.
The catch. The apps run what your device can hold, so the biggest models need Boost or another host. Boost isn’t live. It’s a pre-order now, API key by January 2027, and the page doesn’t say how much use each plan includes. The serving code isn’t released yet.
2. Ollama
What it is. An open-source app that runs models on your own computer, with its own model library, plus a paid cloud for bigger models.
What you can get. The library carries Qwen 3.8 (27B), DeepSeek V4 Pro, DeepSeek R1, Gemma and many more, ready to run with one command.
Price. Running models locally is free. Cloud is pay as you go per token, or Pro at $20 a month ($200 a year) with $60 of credit, or Max at $100 with $300 of credit (pricing).
Limits. Pro allows 3 requests at a time and Max allows 10. Cloud credits reset monthly.
Privacy. The pricing page says cloud “prompt or response data is never logged or trained on.”
Best for. Developers who want local models behind a simple command line and API. The Off Grid AI apps can connect to an Ollama server on your network, too.
The catch. It runs on your computer, not your phone. Cloud is credit-based, so a heavy month can run out.
3. ModelScope
What it is. Alibaba’s model community, at modelscope.cn. It hosts many open models, Qwen especially.
How you get models. From the website, with git, or with the open-source modelscope Python library, which is Apache 2.0 (GitHub). There’s also a cloud notebook with CPU and GPU.
Price. Free to download.
Best for. A second source for Qwen and other open models from Chinese labs.
The catch. Much of the site and docs are in Chinese. ModelScope’s own pages didn’t load for us, so we left out its API quotas.
4. Kaggle Models
What it is. Google’s model library on Kaggle, with open models like Gemma alongside community uploads.
How you get models. Download them in Python with kagglehub.model_download() from the open-source kagglehub library, Apache 2.0 (GitHub), or attach them to a Kaggle notebook.
Price. Free to download. Each model keeps its own license, and some ask you to accept terms first.
Best for. Trying a model in a free Kaggle notebook before you download it, and Google’s own open models.
The catch. It’s a smaller library than Hugging Face, and notebook GPU time has a weekly quota.
5. Civitai
What it is. A community hub for image models, like Stable Diffusion and Flux checkpoints and LoRAs, with on-site generation.
Price. Memberships cost $10, $25 or $50 a month and include 10,000, 25,000 or 50,000 Buzz, the credit Civitai uses for on-site generation (pricing). Creators can now charge a licensing fee or set paid access for model versions.
Best for. Finding an image model or a style LoRA to run locally.
The catch. It’s image models only, and some models now cost money to download. Unrestricted content has moved to a separate site, civitai.red.
6. Replicate
What it is. A platform for running models behind an API, including your own. Cloudflare announced in November 2025 that Replicate is joining it (Cloudflare).
Price. Most public models bill by the second of hardware, like an Nvidia H100 at $5.49 an hour. Some bill per output, like flux-schnell at $3 per thousand images (pricing).
Privacy. API inputs and outputs are deleted after one hour by default (docs).
Best for. Image and video models, and putting your own model behind an API. Cog, its tool for packaging models, is open source, so your packaged model isn’t tied to Replicate.
The catch. Per-second billing is hard to predict, and Replicate is now part of Cloudflare.
7. DeepInfra
What it is. A per-token API with a long list of open models and very low prices.
Price. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 is $0.098 in / $0.294 out per 1M tokens, and Qwen3.8-Flash is $0.113 / $0.382 (pricing).
Limits. 200 requests at a time per model.
Privacy. It doesn’t store your prompts or train on them (docs).
Best for. The cheapest live API for DeepSeek and Qwen today.
The catch. The bill moves with your usage, and the serving code isn’t open.
8. OpenRouter
What it is. A router to more than 600 models from many providers, behind one key and one API format.
Price. No plan. You buy credits with a 5.5% fee, then pay each model’s price (pricing).
Limits. Free models allow 50 requests a day, or 1,000 a day after you buy $10 of credit.
Privacy. It doesn’t train on your prompts. Zero-retention routing is a setting you turn on.
Best for. Switching between models and providers without changing code.
The catch. Privacy depends on the provider unless you turn on zero retention.
9. Together AI
What it is. A large per-token host for open models.
Price. Qwen3.8 Flash is $0.15 in / $0.47 out per 1M tokens, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is $0.30 / $1.20 (pricing).
Privacy. It stores prompts by default. Training is off by default, and zero retention is an admin setting (docs).
Best for. Teams that want a big catalogue from one host.
The catch. Your prompts are kept unless an admin changes the setting.
What Hugging Face still does best
Hugging Face is still the biggest home for open models, with more than 3 million models by its own count (Implicator). Model cards, datasets, Spaces demos and the transformers library all live in one place. When a lab releases open weights, the Hub is usually where you look first. Inference Providers puts 200+ models behind one Hugging Face account, at each provider’s own price with no markup, and PRO is $9 a month with $2 of credit (pricing).
Nothing on this list replaces all of that. Use these alternatives as a second place to get and run models.
Which should you pick?
- You want models on your own phone and computer: the free Off Grid AI apps.
- You want a flat monthly API bill and your own key: Off Grid AI Boost, if you can wait for January 2027.
- You want local models behind a command line: Ollama.
- You want a second source for Qwen: ModelScope.
- You want to try a model in a free notebook: Kaggle Models.
- You want image models and LoRAs: Civitai.
- You want your own model behind an API: Replicate.
- You want the cheapest live per-token API: DeepInfra.
- You want one key for 600+ models: OpenRouter.
Everything in one app
Most apps on this page do one job. Off Grid AI does all of these, on your own computer and phone, in one app.
Free, on every device
- Local chat with open models, no account
- Answers from your files, with the source shown
- Images made on your own GPU
- Voice in and out
- A local API for your own tools
- iPhone and Android with on-device models
Pro, $34.99 once
- Memory of your screens, meetings, mail and docs
- Meetings recorded without a bot, summarised locally
- Dictation into any app on your computer
- Actions in Gmail, Linear, Jira and Notion, only with your yes
- God, a chief of staff that briefs you and preps your meetings
- Web Use and Computer Use for tasks in your own browser and apps
- Reflect: where your time went, by project and person
- Vault, Clipboard and Sync on up to 5 devices
They work together
- A call becomes a transcript. Its decisions become to-dos. The follow-up email waits in Actions for your yes.
- God's morning brief draws on all of it: yesterday's screens, today's meetings, what people owe you.
- Vault fills logins in the same browser where Web Use runs a task, so the agent signs in and your password never goes to a model.
That is a notetaker, a dictation app, a time tracker, a password manager, a clipboard manager and an AI assistant, for one price. Get Pro for $34.99 once
What is the best alternative to Hugging Face?
For keeping the model on your own device or holding your own key, Off Grid AI. The free apps run open models on your phone and computer, and Boost is a flat-price API for open models. For a download library, Ollama and ModelScope.
Where can I download open models besides Hugging Face?
Ollama’s library, ModelScope and Kaggle Models all offer free downloads. Civitai is the main place for image models.
Will Hugging Face shut down after Nvidia buys it?
Nvidia says it will stay open, keep its brand and won’t require Nvidia chips. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
Is Off Grid AI Boost live?
No. You can pre-order now, and your API key arrives by January 2027. Limits not yet published.
Is GitHub Models still available?
No. GitHub retired it on 30 July 2026 and points people to Azure AI Foundry and GitHub Copilot.