HuggingChat shut down in July 2025 and returned as HuggingChat Omni that autumn. Whether you left in between or want something with different defaults, these are the honest options.
HuggingChat was the easiest way to try open-weights models in a browser, which is why its closure in July 2025 sent people looking. Hugging Face relaunched it as HuggingChat Omni a few months later, with a router that picks a model for each request. If what you liked was open models, cheap access, and a plain chat window, the field has grown since.
This list covers hosted chats on open models, self-hosted options, and Omni itself. Each is best at something specific.
Hugging Face's relaunched chat. A router picks among many open models per request and shows which one answered. Free with inference credits, more on a PRO plan.
A private chat on open-weights models (DeepSeek, GLM, Qwen, Kimi) with terse output, encryption at rest, and no training on your chats. Limited free tier, plans from $5/month.
A self-hosted chat interface that connects to local models or any compatible API. You run it, you keep the data.
Runs open-weights models on your own machine, with a simple command line and a desktop app.
Mistral's assistant, built on the French lab's own models, with a free tier.
A privacy-focused chat on open models that, by its own description, keeps conversation history in your browser rather than on its servers.
It closed in July 2025 and relaunched as HuggingChat Omni later that year. Omni routes each request to one of many open models rather than letting you browse a fixed list, so it feels different from the original, but it is live.
For picking open models in a browser with no setup, Omni is closest. For a hosted chat with privacy defaults, Berges AI. For full control, Open WebUI or Ollama on your own machine.
Many overlap. DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, Llama, and gpt-oss are open weights, so several of these chats run them. The differences are in what wraps the model: privacy, output style, price, and whether you host it yourself.
Omni, Ollama, and Open WebUI are free to use, the last two on your own hardware. Le Chat and Venice have free tiers. Berges AI has a limited free tier and paid plans from $5 a month.