{"slug": "gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space", "title": "Gradio SDK now marked as “Paid” when creating a new Space", "summary": "Hugging Face has restricted free-tier accounts from selecting Gradio as an SDK when creating a new Space, impacting a nonprofit that uses the platform for teaching AI/ML to teens. The organization is seeking clarification on whether this is a permanent policy change and if an education exemption exists.", "body_md": "Hi all, posting here in case any HF staff can weigh in, and to flag this for other educators who might be hitting the same wall.\n\nWe run a nonprofit that teaches free technical education to teen scholars (13-18) across the US and internationally. Our AI/ML curriculum has scholars build a simple CPU-based Gradio chatbot and host it on their own Hugging Face Space as part of a live summer camp lesson.\n\nAs of this week, we noticed that new free-tier accounts can no longer select Gradio as an SDK when creating a Space. We tested this on a freshly created account to confirm it wasn’t account-specific. This is a significant change for classroom/education use cases where scholars are running lightweight demo apps, not production workloads, and can’t reasonably be asked to individually purchase PRO.\n\nA few questions for the community and HF team:\n\n- Can anyone confirm whether this is an intentional, permanent policy change or a rollout in progress?\n- Is there an education/nonprofit path for free Gradio Space hosting?\n- Is there a better channel to reach the team directly for something time-sensitive like this (we have scholars in a live cohort right now)?\n\nHappy to share more detail about our program if useful. Thanks for any pointers!", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space", "canonical_source": "https://discuss.huggingface.co/t/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space/177619#post_2", "published_at": "2026-07-09 21:55:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 03:12:36.133822+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools"], "entities": ["Hugging Face", "Gradio"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gradio-sdk-now-marked-as-paid-when-creating-a-new-space.jsonld"}}