HuggingChat vs Poe

HuggingChat

• Trying many open source models from one chat window
• Hugging Face users who want to run Hub jobs and build Spaces from a chat
• Teams that want to self-host the same chat interface

Poe

• Comparing many AI models without a subscription to each one
• Text, image and video models under a single points balance
• Developers who want one API key for models from many labs

HuggingChat

• It runs in a browser only and needs a Hugging Face account. No mobile app is listed, and the GitHub repository of the earlier macOS app was archived on Dec 5, 2025.
• Free accounts get $0.10 of monthly inference credits, subject to change, and Hugging Face does not say how many messages that covers.
• There is no HuggingChat-only plan: more usage comes from Hugging Face PRO at $9 per month, which bundles storage and Spaces benefits, and from buying extra credits.
• Only open source models are offered, and requests run on third-party inference providers that apply their own security and data-handling policies.

Poe

• Usage is metered in compute points, from 10 thousand a day on the lowest plan to 8.25 million a month on the highest; add-on points are sold separately.
• Prices vary by region: the plans page says the final price depends on regional taxes and currency conversion.
• The plans page does not say how many points a free account receives.
• US dollar prices here cover the two lowest plans, as listed on the US App Store; the three larger plans were shown only in rupees.

HuggingChat

Omni model router

Omni chooses a model for each message: image inputs go to a vision model, requests with MCP tools switched on go to a tools-capable model, and everything else follows a default route.

Catalog of open models

Instead of Omni you can chat with a specific model. The list showed 133 models when checked, including DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, Gemma and Llama releases.

MCP tools and web search

Models can call tools on MCP servers. Web Search (Exa) and a Hugging Face server are preconfigured, and you can add your own servers from the chat input or the settings.

ML Intern

An experimental mode that plans and runs machine-learning work on the Hugging Face Hub, such as finetuning or evaluating a model, within a compute budget you set for each conversation.

Image and voice input

Models that support vision accept image uploads, and the published production configuration turns on speech transcription with OpenAI's whisper-large-v3-turbo model.

Open source and self-hostable

The app runs on Chat UI, an Apache-2.0 SvelteKit project that can be run locally, with Docker or with Helm against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including Ollama and llama.cpp.

Poe

Many models, one account

Reaches models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other labs, plus image and video generators, with one sign-in and one points balance.

Multi-bot chat

Compare answers from several models and combine bots for a task inside a single chat thread. Chats can be private or shared as a group chat.

Image and video generation

Creates images and video with generators such as FLUX, Ideogram, Veo and Runway from inside the same app.

Custom bots

Build and share your own bots, with custom knowledge bases if needed. Poe's App Store listing cites more than 1 million custom bots.

Web search

A search mode returns answers drawn from the web, and bots can search for current news.

Poe API

An OpenAI-compatible endpoint reaches hundreds of models and bots with one key. Subscribers spend their existing points on it at no additional cost.

HuggingChat

• Free$0

  A free Hugging Face account with $0.10 of monthly inference credits, subject to change. HuggingChat shows an upgrade prompt once the message limit is reached.

• PRO$9

  per month

  Hugging Face PRO, not a HuggingChat-only plan: $2.00 of monthly credits (20x the free amount), pay-as-you-go beyond that, plus PRO storage and Spaces benefits.

• Team$20

  per user / month

  Hugging Face organization plan with $2.00 of monthly credits per seat, shared by members. HuggingChat usage can be billed to the organization.

• Enterprise$50

  per user / month, with annual commitments

  Everything in Team plus SCIM provisioning, the highest rate limits and managed billing. Bought through Hugging Face's sales team.

Poe

• Free$0

  A smaller points allowance than subscribers get, across free and subscription bots.

• 10 thousand points/day$4.99

  per month, or $49.99 per year (US App Store prices)

  The entry plan, listed as Basic on the App Store: more messages, more models and each bot's maximum input size and chat history.

• 660 thousand points/month$19.99

  per month, or $199.99 per year (US App Store prices)

  A monthly pool of 660 thousand points to spend across any model or bot.

• 1.65 million points/month₹4,999

  per month, or ₹49,900 per year (as shown in India)

  A larger monthly pool. The US dollar price was not shown when the plans page was read from India.

• 3.3 million points/month₹9,999

  per month, or ₹99,900 per year (as shown in India)

  A larger monthly pool. The US dollar price was not shown when the plans page was read from India.

• 8.25 million points/month₹24,999

  per month, or ₹249,900 per year (as shown in India)

  The largest pool. The US dollar price was not shown when the plans page was read from India.

HuggingChat

No public discounts listed.

Poe

• Annual discount

  Save 17% with yearly billing

  Poe's plans page marks yearly billing as saving 17% against monthly billing. On the US App Store the lowest plan is $49.99 a year or $4.99 a month.