Inference Providers credits show $0.00 despite no usage

Beginners
1

Hello,

My Hugging Face account shows $0.00 in Inference Providers credits. My usage dashboard shows no inference requests and $0.00 usage. I have no payment method registered.

When I try to use Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct, I receive an error saying I have no remaining credits.

Could you please clarify why my account has no available inference credits and whether my account is eligible for the free monthly allowance?

Thank you.

2

Hi @1234jithu – this trips up a lot of people because HF has two separate inference systems with different billing:

Inference Providers (what you’re hitting): This is the paid API gateway to third-party providers (Fireworks, Novita, Together AI, etc.). It draws from your billing balance. Without a registered payment method, balance is $0.00 and requests fail.

Serverless Inference API (the free tier): This is HF’s own hosted inference, free for many smaller models with rate limits. It’s completely separate from Inference Providers.

To use Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct for free, use the serverless path – just omit the provider argument:

from huggingface_hub import InferenceClient

client = InferenceClient(
    model="Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct",
    token="hf_..."   # your read token
)
result = client.text_generation("Hello!", max_new_tokens=100)
print(result)

No provider= means it routes to HF’s serverless API, not a paid third-party provider. Qwen2.5-1.5B is small enough to be available on the free tier.

You can also test right on the model card page – the Inference API widget on the right sidebar lets you send prompts without any code or billing setup.

If you eventually want to use Inference Providers for heavier workloads, add a payment method under Settings / Billing. But for this model size the serverless route works great.