Long-running agents deserve better inference.
vs

Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Dolphin

Hugging Face routes across 17 established providers. Dolphin is a single decentralized network with one hosted model.

By The Subconscious Team · Updated

Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Dolphin: key differences

Hugging Face's router covers 132 chat models, including DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, on partners like Groq, Fireworks and Together, with pass-through pricing and failover when a provider is flagged unavailable. Dolphin's API launched in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out per million tokens, served on idle consumer GPUs. It publishes no speed, context or SLA, and signup needs a crypto wallet and Telegram.

Hugging Face is the safer default for model choice and failover. Dolphin is worth a look for very cheap background calls on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and for uncensored models, but its consumer GPUs make latency and uptime less predictable.

What Hugging Face Inference Providers and Dolphin do

Hugging Face Inference Providers

Inference Providers is a router run by Hugging Face that sits in front of partner inference clouds. The current partner list covers Baseten, Cerebras, Cohere, DeepInfra, fal, Featherless AI, Fireworks, Groq, Novita, Nscale, OVHcloud, Public AI, Replicate, Scaleway, Together, WaveSpeedAI and Z.ai, plus Hugging Face's own HF Inference, which now mostly serves CPU workloads like embeddings and classification. Chat traffic goes through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint at router.huggingface.co/v1, and the Python and JavaScript clients add text-to-image, video, speech and embeddings. The router lists 132 chat models today, from GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3 to gpt-oss-120b on eleven providers.

Example models: GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, gpt-oss-120b

Full Hugging Face Inference Providers profile

Dolphin

Dolphin began in 2023 as Eric Hartford's series of open-source, uncensored fine-tunes, trained to drop the refusals and baked-in guidelines of their base models so that the developer sets the rules through the system prompt. Current releases include Dolphin Llama 3.1 8B and Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition, built with Venice, and the project publishes nearly 100 models on Hugging Face. It also runs a chat app, a Telegram bot and a synthetic data service that generates answers to commonly refused prompts.

Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B

Full Dolphin profile

Should you choose Hugging Face Inference Providers or Dolphin?

Hugging Face Inference Providers

Choose Hugging Face Inference Providers for

  • Many open models on one key and bill
  • Automatic failover across hosts
  • Comparing providers

Dolphin

Choose Dolphin for

  • Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls
  • Uncensored models
  • Requests nodes cannot log

Hugging Face Inference Providers vs Dolphin at a glance

AttributeHugging Face Inference ProvidersDolphin
Model accessOpen weightsOpen weights, uncensored fine-tunes
Flagship modelsGLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B
SpeedRoutes to fastest provider by defaultUnknown
PriceProvider rates, no markup$0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash)
CustomizationN/AOwn uncensored fine-tunes
DeploymentServerless router; dedicated EndpointsDecentralized serverless API
Long contextUp to 1M, provider-dependentUnknown

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Hugging Face Inference Providers and Dolphin?

Hugging Face routes across 17 established providers. Dolphin is a single decentralized network with one hosted model.

When should I choose Hugging Face Inference Providers over Dolphin?

Many open models on one key and bill; Automatic failover across hosts; Comparing providers.

When should I choose Dolphin over Hugging Face Inference Providers?

Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls; Uncensored models; Requests nodes cannot log.

Is Hugging Face Inference Providers or Dolphin cheaper?

Hugging Face Inference Providers: Provider rates, no markup. Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

Related comparisons

Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.