Benchmark report
Is the Hugging Face API slow?
Response times from 6 cities
Mixed by location
Response times ranged from 31 ms in Montreal to 240 ms in Singapore. Where you are matters.
- Fastest
- 31 ms
- Montreal
- Slowest
- 240 ms
- Singapore
- Successful requests
- 100%
- 6 locations
Response time around the world
Montreal31 ms
San Francisco87 ms
Amsterdam102 ms
Tokyo169 ms
Mumbai215 ms
Singapore240 ms
Why is Singapore eight times slower than Montreal?
Every city reached a nearby CloudFront site, and connecting plus the secure handshake took under 15 ms everywhere in the controlled run of 4 October. The rest is waiting: CloudFront does not cache this response, so each request travels on to Hugging Face and back. That wait was 25 ms from Montreal, 73 to 97 ms from San Francisco and Amsterdam, 159 ms from Tokyo, 200 ms from Mumbai and 229 ms from Singapore. It grows with distance from Montreal, which suggests the API is answered from eastern North America.
Click the location to see each stage.
Singapore238 ms
Singapore- Finding the server
- 4 ms
- Reaching the server
- 2 ms
- Setting up security
- 7 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 229 ms
- Receiving the response
- 0 ms
- Total
- 238 ms
Finding the server is measured once per location, so it sits outside these bars. Open a city to see it.
Bars show the typical request, so the parts add up to its total. Why
Compare all locationsHide the comparison
Click a city to see its stage-by-stage breakdown.
Amsterdam105 ms
Amsterdam- Finding the server
- 2 ms
- Reaching the server
- 3 ms
- Setting up security
- 5 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 97 ms
- Receiving the response
- 0 ms
- Total
- 105 ms
San Francisco85 ms
San Francisco- Finding the server
- 14 ms
- Reaching the server
- 5 ms
- Setting up security
- 7 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 73 ms
- Receiving the response
- 0 ms
- Total
- 85 ms
Montreal31 ms
Montreal- Finding the server
- 20 ms
- Reaching the server
- 2 ms
- Setting up security
- 4 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 25 ms
- Receiving the response
- 0 ms
- Total
- 31 ms
Singapore238 ms
Singapore- Finding the server
- 4 ms
- Reaching the server
- 2 ms
- Setting up security
- 7 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 229 ms
- Receiving the response
- 0 ms
- Total
- 238 ms
Tokyo167 ms
Tokyo- Finding the server
- 1 ms
- Reaching the server
- 2 ms
- Setting up security
- 5 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 159 ms
- Receiving the response
- 1 ms
- Total
- 167 ms
Mumbai207 ms
Mumbai- Finding the server
- 2 ms
- Reaching the server
- 2 ms
- Setting up security
- 4 ms
- Waiting for the server: most of the time
- 200 ms
- Receiving the response
- 1 ms
- Total
- 207 ms
The phases come from the controlled run of 4 October 2026. Typical and slower times pool the daily requests. 6 of 6 test locations included: Amsterdam, San Francisco, Montreal, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai.
Finding the server is measured once per location, so it sits outside these bars. Open a city to see it.
Bars show the typical request, so the parts add up to its total. Why
Hugging Face still feels slow?
- Check Hugging Face’s status page
- Hub and API incidents are posted there. A slow response during one is not your network.
- This is not a model download benchmark
- We call the models listing with a limit of one, 505 bytes of JSON. Downloading weights or datasets, Inference Endpoints, Spaces and authenticated calls to private repositories are not measured.
- Distance to the origin sets the time
- Nothing is cached, so a nearby CloudFront site does not make the answer faster; being close to where the API runs does. Five cities' daily medians moved by 30 ms or less over the 13 days, so the gap between cities is geography, not bad days. San Francisco's was 115 or 116 ms until 30 September and 82 to 89 ms from 1 October. Its requests were answered in Los Angeles in the controlled run of 27 September and in San Francisco in the run of 4 October.
Response time over the last 29 days
Show the numbers
| Day | Amsterdam | San Francisco | Montreal | Singapore | Tokyo | Mumbai |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 September 2026 | 103 ms | 113 ms | 55 ms | 240 ms | 169 ms | 214 ms |
| 12 September 2026 | 101 ms | 112 ms | 54 ms | 234 ms | 169 ms | 211 ms |
| 13 September 2026 | 102 ms | 112 ms | 53 ms | 259 ms | 179 ms | 209 ms |
| 14 September 2026 | 103 ms | 114 ms | 54 ms | 244 ms | 170 ms | 206 ms |
| 15 September 2026 | 105 ms | 109 ms | 31 ms | 245 ms | 173 ms | 223 ms |
| 16 September 2026 | 103 ms | 115 ms | 33 ms | 240 ms | 172 ms | 207 ms |
| 17 September 2026 | 101 ms | 117 ms | 30 ms | 248 ms | 170 ms | 224 ms |
| 18 September 2026 | 103 ms | 117 ms | 30 ms | 246 ms | 170 ms | 206 ms |
| 19 September 2026 | 103 ms | 112 ms | 33 ms | 237 ms | 169 ms | 205 ms |
| 20 September 2026 | 106 ms | 115 ms | 34 ms | 241 ms | 172 ms | 212 ms |
| 21 September 2026 | 103 ms | 112 ms | 32 ms | 255 ms | 174 ms | 223 ms |
| 22 September 2026 | 104 ms | 113 ms | 31 ms | 250 ms | 172 ms | 210 ms |
| 23 September 2026 | 103 ms | 112 ms | 30 ms | 245 ms | 172 ms | 209 ms |
| 24 September 2026 | 104 ms | 112 ms | 30 ms | 264 ms | 170 ms | 220 ms |
| 25 September 2026 | 103 ms | 117 ms | 33 ms | 249 ms | 173 ms | 219 ms |
| 26 September 2026 | 104 ms | 112 ms | 32 ms | 245 ms | 173 ms | 221 ms |
| 27 September 2026 | 102 ms | 115 ms | 31 ms | 261 ms | 172 ms | 218 ms |
| 28 September 2026 | 104 ms | 116 ms | 31 ms | 249 ms | 171 ms | 218 ms |
| 29 September 2026 | 103 ms | 116 ms | 32 ms | 249 ms | 172 ms | 211 ms |
| 30 September 2026 | 100 ms | 116 ms | 31 ms | 233 ms | 171 ms | 207 ms |
| 1 October 2026 | 102 ms | 82 ms | 31 ms | 232 ms | 169 ms | 220 ms |
| 2 October 2026 | 103 ms | 89 ms | 31 ms | 236 ms | 170 ms | 205 ms |
| 3 October 2026 | 100 ms | 87 ms | 31 ms | 240 ms | 170 ms | 206 ms |
| 4 October 2026 | 103 ms | 84 ms | 32 ms | 242 ms | 168 ms | 207 ms |
| 5 October 2026 | 101 ms | 87 ms | 30 ms | 238 ms | 166 ms | 206 ms |
| 6 October 2026 | 105 ms | 84 ms | 32 ms | 238 ms | 169 ms | 222 ms |
| 7 October 2026 | 104 ms | 86 ms | 30 ms | 237 ms | 169 ms | 212 ms |
| 9 October 2026 | 103 ms | 83 ms | 33 ms | 244 ms | 169 ms | 219 ms |
| 10 October 2026 | 102 ms | 85 ms | 31 ms | 260 ms | 167 ms | 235 ms |
About this measurement
GET huggingface.co/api/models · 65 requests per location over 13 daily runs · 27 September 2026 to 10 October 2026
What we tested · API response. GET huggingface.co/api/models?limit=1: 505 bytes of JSON through CloudFront, uncached. The API a client calls before it downloads weights.
How LatencyRadar measures response time →
Technical details
Doesn’t measure: Model or dataset downloads, Inference Endpoints, Spaces, or an authenticated call to a private repository.
One Hugging Face surface: GET huggingface.co/api/models?limit=1, the public Hub API that lists models, answered with 505 bytes of JSON through CloudFront without caching. Libraries and tools call endpoints like this before they download anything, so it stands for the lookup step of fetching a model and for the route from each city to where the API runs.
Between 27 September and 10 October 2026 the typical time was 31 ms in Montreal, 87 ms in San Francisco, 102 ms in Amsterdam, 169 ms in Tokyo, 215 ms in Mumbai and 240 ms in Singapore. Montreal was the fastest city and Singapore the slowest on all 13 days, and the slower times sit close to the typical ones everywhere (at most 263 ms, in Singapore). The API is steady; where you call it from is what changes the number.
| Test location | Typical response time | Slower response time | Requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 102 ms | 112 ms | 65 |
| San Francisco | 87 ms | 118 ms | 65 |
| Montreal | 31 ms | 40 ms | 65 |
| Singapore | 240 ms | 263 ms | 65 |
| Tokyo | 169 ms | 175 ms | 65 |
| Mumbai | 215 ms | 235 ms | 65 |
Typical: half of the requests finished within this time (technical: p50). Slower: 95% of requests finished within this time (technical: p95). Statistics
- Request
- GET huggingface.co/api/models
- Measured from
- Amsterdam · San Francisco · Montreal · Singapore · Tokyo · Mumbai
- Requests
- Daily measurements from 27 September 2026 to 10 October 2026. 6 of 6 test locations included: Amsterdam, San Francisco, Montreal, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai. · 27 September 2026 to 10 October 2026
- Timings taken
- DNS, connect, TLS, waiting for the server, download
- Report coverage
- 6 of 6 test locations included: Amsterdam, San Francisco, Montreal, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai.
- Daily requests in each location
- Amsterdam: 65 · San Francisco: 65 · Montreal: 65 · Singapore: 65 · Tokyo: 65 · Mumbai: 65
- Typical response time
- Median of the eligible daily requests in each included location.
- Slower response time
- The 95th percentile of the same eligible daily requests in each included location.
Hugging Face API
https://huggingface.co/api/models?limit=1
Independent measurement by LatencyRadar. Not affiliated with Hugging Face API. · How we measure (v1.3)
How fast is your API around the world?
Run a free speed test from multiple cities and find out where your users are waiting. No setup, no account required.
No account required · Takes about 30 seconds.
