Hugging Face Chat UI Integration

Hugging Face Chat UI is an open-source web interface for interacting with language models. It supports multiple providers including OpenAI-compatible endpoints, allowing self-hosted deployments to connect to any compatible API.

By setting the OpenAI provider configuration, you can point Chat UI at LLM API to access all available models.

Prerequisites

An LLM API account with an API key
Hugging Face Chat UI installed or accessible

Setup

Get Your LLM API Key

Log in to your LLM API dashboard
Click Create Key to Start
Copy your new API key immediately — it will only be shown once
Store the key securely (e.g., in a password manager or .env file)

LLM API is an OpenAI-compatible gateway that gives you access to dozens of AI models through a single API key and endpoint.

Configure LLM API in Hugging Face Chat UI

Open the .env file (or .env.local) in your Chat UI installation.
Set your LLM API key:

OPENAI_API_KEY=your-llm-api-key-here

Configure the MODELS environment variable to use LLM API:

MODELS=\`[{
"name": "GPT-4o via LLM API",
"id": "openai/gpt-4o",
"endpoints": [{
"type": "openai",
"baseURL": "https://api.llmapi.ai/v1"
}]
}]\`

Restart Chat UI --- the configured models will appear in the model selector.

Test the Integration

Verify that Hugging Face Chat UI can successfully communicate with LLM API by sending a test request. All requests will now be routed through LLM API.

You can add multiple models to the MODELS array, each using the same LLM API endpoint but with different model IDs.

Benefits of Using LLM API with Hugging Face Chat UI

Multi-Provider Access: Use models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more through a single API
Cost Control: Track and limit your AI spending with detailed usage analytics
Unified Billing: One account for all providers instead of managing multiple API keys
Caching: Reduce costs with response caching for repeated requests

View all available models on the models page.