Space-to-Space requests to *.hf.space return 503 from awselb (since Jul 8)

Since between Jul 8–9 2026, HTTP requests made from INSIDE a Space container to ANY .hf.space host return 503 with body {“data”:[]} and header server: awselb/2.0. The AWS load balancer answers directly; the request never reaches the target.
Space (no x-proxied-
headers). The same URLs return 200 from outside HF.

Verified: happens against multiple of my own Spaces AND against gradio spaces; identical with and without a valid PRO token; reproduced from two different container egress IPs; DNS is identical inside and outside.

This breaks the documented pattern of calling a ZeroGPU Space from another Space
via gradio_client.

Is this an intentional policy change or a regression? If intentional, what is the
supported way for one Space to call another Space’s API?

Is this an intentional policy change or a regression?

I don’t know which one it is, but…

Thanks,
Our setup is different from the once you ping me: a CPU Docker Space calling ZeroGPU Gradio Spaces via gradio_client, which supports the conclusion that this affects ALL Space-to-Space traffic regardless of SDK, visibility, or auth. It worked for us just a day ago before getting the issues.

Summary of the controls we ran, they are same-minute probes from inside a Space container and from outside:

  • Same URL, same DNS IPs: outside → 200 (server: uvicorn, x-proxied-* headers present), inside → 503 {“data”:} (server: awselb/2.0, no proxy headers, so the request never reaches the target Space).
  • Identical result with a valid PRO token, an invalid token, and no token.
  • Also 503 against a public third-party Gradio Space from insid, not account- or Space-specific.
  • Reproduced from three different container egress IPs.
  • One data point that may help HF narrow it down: from inside the SAME container and in the SAME probe, https://huggingface.co/api/whoami-v2 returns 200 (authenticated) and general egress works fine. Only *.hf.space hosts are rejected. So this looks specific to the *.hf.space load balancer listener for traffic originating from Space containers, not container networking/DNS/egress.

Hopefully it’s transient and gets fixed soon.

Thanks for reporting this. We’re aware of the issue and are currently waiting for the infra team to respond.

I also encountered that error. At first, I thought it was due to my code, but after a while, I found out the cause was huggingface.

It’s fixed now. Thanks!