Hugging Face Website Access Issue in Pakistan

A developer and AI/ML student in Pakistan, Salik, reports that Hugging Face's website and services are inaccessible without a VPN, returning HTTP 429 rate limit errors. Hugging Face has not yet responded to the request to investigate potential regional IP blocking or incorrect rate limiting affecting Pakistani users.

Hello Hugging Face Support Team, I am a developer and AI/ML student from Pakistan. I am facing an issue where the Hugging Face website and some of its services do not work properly when I access them from Pakistan without using a VPN. When I try to access Hugging Face, I often receive errors such as: “429 - We had to rate limit you. Upgrade to a paid plan or send us an email.” The website becomes accessible only when I use a VPN, which makes it difficult for me to use Hugging Face models, datasets, and other resources for my AI/ML learning and projects. Could you please investigate whether there is any regional IP blocking, incorrect rate limiting, or other issue affecting users in Pakistan? It would be very helpful if you could improve accessibility for Pakistani users. My details: Country: Pakistan Issue: Website/API access requires VPN Error: HTTP 429 rate limit Thank you for your support. I appreciate your efforts in making AI resources accessible to developers worldwide. Best regards, Salik