Alibaba Cloud
vs
Hugging Face
What's good about each
- 30+ regions, most in mainland China and Asia-Pacific
- 3,200+ CDN nodes in 70+ countries
- Qwen models served through Model Studio
- PolarDB, its own MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible database
- Hub hosts 3M+ public models and 500k+ datasets
- Free hosting for public models, datasets and demos
- AI models and datasets can be mounted directly into a job
- Single GPUs up to 8x H200 or RTX PRO 6000
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | Alibaba Cloud | Hugging Face | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small VM | $5.62 /mo 2 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (ecs.e-c2m1.large) | -- Not listed | |
| Medium VM | $60.34 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (ecs.e-c1m2.xlarge) | -- Not listed | |
| Large VM | $188.64 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (ecs.c8a.2xlarge) | -- Not listed | |
| Block storage | $7.60 /mo 100 GB (ESSD PL0) | -- Not listed | |
| Object storage | $27.70 /mo 1 TB | $18.00 /mo 1 TB (private) | 35% cheaper on Hugging Face |
| Load balancer | $19.40 /mo Network Load Balancer | -- Not listed | |
| Serverless | $20.63 /mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration (0.15 vCPU) | -- Not listed | |
| Egress allowance | 200 GB / mo | 8x the amount of data stored | |
| Egress | $74.00 /TB $0.074 / GB | Included within the allowance |
Heads up: Figures take each provider's closest plan to a common setup, and vary by region and usage. Hover a service for the reference configuration. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.
GPUs
Alibaba Cloud offers 4 GPU models, while Hugging Face offers 7. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | Alibaba Cloud | Hugging Face | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
T4
12 configs · 2 configs
|
$1.12 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.40 /GPU/hr On-demand | 64% cheaper on Hugging Face |
|
V100
14 configs
|
$1.51 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | Alibaba Cloud only |
|
A10
26 configs
|
$0.71 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | Alibaba Cloud only |
|
P100
12 configs
|
$0.87 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | Alibaba Cloud only |
|
RTX PRO 6000
4 configs
|
-- | $2.75 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
|
H200
4 configs
|
-- | $5.00 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
|
A100
3 configs
|
-- | $2.50 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
|
L40S
3 configs
|
-- | $1.80 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
|
L4
2 configs
|
-- | $0.80 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
|
A10G
4 configs
|
-- | $1.00 /GPU/hr On-demand | Hugging Face only |
Alibaba Cloud bills on-demand and reserved (12 months); Hugging Face bills on-demand. The line under each price names the billing type shown.
Services
Managed services each provider offers.
Compliance
Frameworks each provider states on its own site, each linked to its source.
| Framework | Alibaba Cloud | Hugging Face |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | Type II |
| ISO 27001 | Yes | -- |
| HIPAA | Yes | -- |
| GDPR | Yes | Enterprise plan only |
| PCI DSS | Level 1 | -- |
Heads up: Each entry links to the provider's own statement. An attestation can cover one tier, one region or the platform alone rather than every service. Verify the scope before you rely on it. A dash means we found nothing to link to, not that the provider lacks it.
Company details
| Fact | Alibaba Cloud | Hugging Face |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2009 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | China | USA |
| Locations | 31 | -- |
| Example customers | Taobao, Henkel, Hang Seng Bank, Tiger Brokers | Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Grammarly, Ai2 |
| Website | www.alibabacloud.com | huggingface.co |
Alternatives to consider
Compare Alibaba Cloud and Hugging Face against other cloud providers.
Our data for Alibaba Cloud was last updated on Sept. 24, 2026, and for Hugging Face on Sept. 24, 2026.