Hugging Face — Browse Latest Models

Purpose

Return the most recently created models on Hugging Face — for each model: id (owner/name), author, createdAt, lastModified, downloads, likes, tags, pipeline_tag, library_name, gated flag, and canonical model URL. Optionally narrow by pipeline task (e.g. text-generation, text-to-image), library (transformers, diffusers, gguf, ...), author/org, or a free-text search. Read-only — never creates, edits, or downloads model artifacts.

When to Use

• "What are the newest models on Hugging Face right now?"
• Hourly / daily polling for newly-uploaded models matching a task or library.
• Watching a specific org (e.g. meta-llama, google, stabilityai) for new releases.
• Discovering new fine-tunes of a base model (combine with search=<base> or filter=<task>).
• Any flow that would otherwise scrape huggingface.co/models?sort=created — the JSON API is faster, cheaper, paginated cleanly, and returns richer per-model metadata.

Workflow

Hugging Face exposes a fully public, unauthenticated JSON API at https://huggingface.co/api/models. No cookies, no anti-bot, no residential proxy required. Rate limit is 500 requests / 5-minute fixed window on the api scope (advertised via Ratelimit-Policy and Ratelimit response headers). robots.txt is Allow: / for all user-agents. Lead with the API; the browser path works as a fallback but is ~50× slower because the listing page is fully JS-rendered.

1. Fetch the most recent models (default — no filters):

   GET https://huggingface.co/api/models?sort=createdAt&direction=-1&limit=50
   

   Returns a JSON array of model objects. direction=-1 is descending (newest first); pair with sort=createdAt for upload time. limit is per-page; observed max is 1000 per request — paginate via the Link header for more.

2. Optional query parameters (combine freely):

   Param	Effect	Example
   sort	Sort field. Valid: createdAt, lastModified, downloads, likes, trendingScore	sort=createdAt
   direction	-1 desc, 1 asc	direction=-1
   limit	Page size (≤ 1000)	limit=50
   filter	Pipeline tag filter — text-generation, text-to-image, text-to-video, image-text-to-text, automatic-speech-recognition, feature-extraction, robotics, any-to-any, etc.	filter=text-generation
   library	Library filter — transformers, diffusers, gguf, mlx, sentence-transformers, transformers.js, pytorch, tf, jax, onnx, safetensors	library=diffusers
   author	Restrict to one user/org namespace	author=meta-llama
   search	Free-text substring match on model id	search=llama-3
   full	If true, include author, sha, gated, lastModified, siblings[] (file manifest)	full=true
   config	If true, include config.json contents (architectures, model_type, tokenizer_config) inline	config=true
   cardData	If true, include cardData (model-card frontmatter: license, language, datasets, base_model)	cardData=true

   Unrecognized params are silently dropped. Combine filters and search for narrow queries, e.g. ?filter=text-to-image&library=diffusers&search=flux&sort=createdAt&direction=-1.

3. Parse each result object. Every item is a flat JSON object (named fields — not positional). Default-mode fields:

   • id — "owner/name" (e.g. "meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B") or a single-segment legacy id ("bert-base-uncased"). This is also modelId (duplicated).
   • _id — MongoDB ObjectId (12-byte hex). Its first 4 bytes encode the upload timestamp; this is what cursor= paginates against. Don't treat this as the model identifier — use id.
   • createdAt — ISO-8601 UTC timestamp of initial upload.
   • tags[] — string array. Includes raw labels ("transformers", "safetensors", "qwen2"), pipeline-tag duplicates ("text-generation"), language codes ("en", "fr"), license tags ("license:apache-2.0"), "base_model:<id>", "endpoints_compatible", and a trailing "region:us" deployment-region tag.
   • pipeline_tag — canonical task (e.g. "text-generation", "text-to-image"). Absent when the uploader didn't tag the model — many fresh uploads have no pipeline_tag until the README is committed. Don't assume it's always present.
   • library_name — canonical library (e.g. "transformers", "diffusers"). Also frequently absent on bare uploads.
   • downloads, likes — integers; both 0 for fresh uploads (uploads are rate-counted with delay).
   • private — always false for results returned by this endpoint (private models are filtered server-side).

   With full=true, additionally: author, gated (false / "manual" / "auto"), lastModified, sha (repo commit SHA), siblings[] (array of {rfilename} entries — the file manifest).

4. Construct the canonical model URL:

   https://huggingface.co/{id}
   

   id is used verbatim, slashes included ("meta-llama/Llama-Prompt-Guard-2-86M" → https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-Prompt-Guard-2-86M). No URL-encoding needed for the slash. The page exists for every model in the response.

5. Paginate (only if you need > limit results). The response includes a Link header:

   Link: <https://huggingface.co/api/models?sort=createdAt&direction=-1&limit=50&cursor=eyJfaWQiOnsiJGx0IjoiNmEwZTMxNDFmMjdlNGU0NGU5OTlhMjhhIn19>; rel="next"
   

   Parse the URL between < and > and follow it — the cursor is opaque (base64-encoded {_id: {$lt: <ObjectId>}} mongo predicate); do not decode/construct it yourself. There is no prev link. Stop when the Link header is absent or the response array is empty.

6. Honor the rate limit. Each response carries:

   Ratelimit-Policy: "fixed window";"api";q=500;w=300
   Ratelimit: "api";r=<remaining>;t=<seconds-to-window-reset>
   

   500 requests per 300-second fixed window. Stay well below it (e.g. ≤ 1 req/s sustained) and back off when Ratelimit: r=... drops below ~50. There is no documented per-IP block on overage — the server returns 429 Too Many Requests and you wait t seconds.

Browser fallback

Use only if the JSON API is unreachable from your egress (it shouldn't be — no anti-bot, no geo restrictions observed).

https://huggingface.co/models?sort=created&pipeline_tag=<task>&library=<lib>&search=<q>&p=<page>

• sort=created (note: the browser URL uses created, the API uses createdAt — these are not interchangeable across surfaces).
• p=N paginates (0-indexed, 30 results per page).
• The listing is fully JS-rendered; browse get markdown body parses cleanly. Each card text is <id> [task • params •] Updated <relative-time> ago followed by the canonical URL in the surrounding anchor <a href="/{id}">. browse snapshot returns workable refs for clicking through to a model page, but for bulk extraction prefer markdown parsing.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• sort=createdAt vs sort=created: the API endpoint uses createdAt (camelCase). The browser URL uses created (no suffix). They are not aliased — passing sort=created to /api/models is silently ignored and the API falls back to its default sort (which is not createdAt — it's lastModified desc, so you'll get stale results that look "recent" but aren't). Always use sort=createdAt&direction=-1 on the API.
• createdAt ≠ lastModified: createdAt is when the repo was first pushed. lastModified is the most recent commit (README edit, weight reupload, etc.). For "newest models" use createdAt. For "recently updated models" use lastModified. The two diverge by hours/days for active repos.
• pipeline_tag and library_name are often absent on fresh uploads. Many models surface in sort=createdAt&direction=-1 with no README and no auto-detected pipeline. Treat both as optional fields and key off tags[] if you must classify.
• _id is not the model identifier — id is. The _id field is the internal MongoDB ObjectId; it changes if the repo is recreated. The user-facing identifier is id (also exposed as modelId). Use id for canonical URLs and downstream /api/models/{id} lookups.
• No total_count is returned. Unlike Craigslist's totalResultCount, the HF models endpoint doesn't include a total. The total models count (~2.9M as of 2026-05) is only available from the browser listing page header text. If you need a count, scrape it from https://huggingface.co/models and parse the number under the # Models h1.
• Cursor pagination is opaque and one-way. The Link: rel="next" header carries a base64'd mongo predicate. There is no rel="prev" — you can only walk forward. If you need to resume from a known model, supply cursor=<base64 of {"_id":{"$lt":"<the model's _id>"}}> — the predicate is straightforward to construct if you have a prior _id, but the safer pattern is to walk from the start and stop when createdAt < <cutoff>.
• limit ceiling is 1000. Passing limit=10000 clamps silently to 1000.
• Gated and private models. private: true repos are never returned by this endpoint regardless of auth. gated: "manual" / "auto" repos are returned (visible in the listing) but their model page may require accepting terms before download — the listing itself is public. Surface gated to callers when full=true so they know to expect a terms-gate on click-through.
• Adult / NSFW models surface in sort=createdAt. The default firehose includes user-uploaded LoRAs and image models with explicit names/content. Callers that render results to end users should filter on tags[] for "not-for-all-audiences" / "nsfw" or apply name-based filtering — this is not auto-redacted by the API.
• tags[] is a multi-namespace bag, not normalized. Same value can appear as a raw label and as a namespaced tag (e.g. "text-generation" and "pipeline_tag:text-generation" rarely both appear, but "safetensors" may appear both as a raw tag and as "library:safetensors"-equivalent). Don't expect uniqueness or a stable schema across categories.
• Rate-limit policy header is the source of truth. The 500-per-5-minute number above is observed on the api scope as of 2026-05-20. Read Ratelimit-Policy on each response in case HF changes it — don't hardcode the window.
• No residential proxy required, no stealth required. browse cloud fetch <url> (the bare HTTP path) works fine — no need to spin up a stealth session unless you're also doing browser interactions in the same flow. This is a cost win: a single fetch call costs ~$0 vs. ~$0.01–0.05 for a full session.
• huggingface_hub Python SDK is the official client (from huggingface_hub import HfApi; HfApi().list_models(sort="createdAt", direction=-1, limit=50)). It wraps this exact endpoint with auth/retry/typing. Skill consumers who can run Python should prefer it for ergonomic typed results; agents driving from a sandbox without Python should use the raw HTTP path above.

Expected Output

{
  "query": {
    "sort": "createdAt",
    "direction": -1,
    "limit": 50,
    "filter": "text-generation",
    "library": null,
    "author": null,
    "search": null
  },
  "count": 50,
  "next_cursor_url": "https://huggingface.co/api/models?sort=createdAt&direction=-1&limit=50&filter=text-generation&cursor=eyJfaWQiOnsiJGx0IjoiNmEwZTJlZmM2Mjc4ZDhiMmU2MjNlMTk0In19",
  "models": [
    {
      "id": "sstoica12/UAS_qwen7b_medmcqa_100_alpaca_400_proximity_0_8_diversity_0_19999999999999996",
      "author": "sstoica12",
      "created_at": "2026-05-20T22:00:28.000Z",
      "last_modified": "2026-05-20T22:03:07.000Z",
      "pipeline_tag": "text-generation",
      "library_name": "transformers",
      "tags": [
        "transformers",
        "safetensors",
        "qwen2",
        "text-generation",
        "conversational",
        "arxiv:1910.09700",
        "text-generation-inference",
        "endpoints_compatible",
        "region:us"
      ],
      "downloads": 0,
      "likes": 0,
      "gated": false,
      "private": false,
      "sha": "1993fd1a13a3aebc3cfb2db24c7c8f32f79b52ed",
      "url": "https://huggingface.co/sstoica12/UAS_qwen7b_medmcqa_100_alpaca_400_proximity_0_8_diversity_0_19999999999999996"
    },
    {
      "id": "longtermrisk/Olmo-3-7B-Instruct-replaydistillsftjob-306b1e549725-replay_distillation-a0.3-b0.1-s3407",
      "author": "longtermrisk",
      "created_at": "2026-05-20T22:10:38.000Z",
      "last_modified": "2026-05-20T22:10:44.000Z",
      "pipeline_tag": null,
      "library_name": "transformers",
      "tags": ["transformers", "safetensors", "arxiv:1910.09700", "endpoints_compatible", "region:us"],
      "downloads": 0,
      "likes": 0,
      "gated": false,
      "private": false,
      "url": "https://huggingface.co/longtermrisk/Olmo-3-7B-Instruct-replaydistillsftjob-306b1e549725-replay_distillation-a0.3-b0.1-s3407"
    }
  ]
}

Three shapes the caller should be prepared for:

// 1. Normal — array of model objects, plus next cursor URL.
{ "count": 50, "next_cursor_url": "...", "models": [...] }

// 2. End of pagination — empty array, no Link header.
{ "count": 0, "next_cursor_url": null, "models": [] }

// 3. Rate-limited — server returns 429, no JSON body, with Retry-After / Ratelimit headers indicating wait time.
{ "error": "rate_limited", "retry_after_seconds": 187, "ratelimit_remaining": 0 }