diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 6083e83..d82f790 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1288,7 +1288,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "esaxx-rs",
  "fancy-regex",
  "getrandom 0.3.3",
- "hf-hub",
  "indicatif",
  "itertools",
  "log",
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 4f1b27e..c9f7f0e 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -14,22 +14,21 @@ categories = ["science", "text-processing"]
 exclude = ["tests/*"]
 
 [features]
-default      = ["onig"]
+default      = ["onig", "hf-hub"]
+hf-hub       = ["dep:hf-hub"]
 onig         = ["tokenizers/onig",
                 "tokenizers/progressbar",
-                "tokenizers/esaxx_fast",
-                "tokenizers/http"]
+                "tokenizers/esaxx_fast"]
 
 fancy-regex  = ["tokenizers/fancy-regex",
                 "tokenizers/progressbar",
-                "tokenizers/esaxx_fast",
-                "tokenizers/http"]
+                "tokenizers/esaxx_fast"]
 
 [dependencies]
 tokenizers = { version = "0.21", default-features = false }
 safetensors = "0.5"
 ndarray = "0.15"
-hf-hub = { version = "0.4", default-features = false, features = ["ureq"] }
+hf-hub = { version = "0.4", default-features = false, features = ["ureq"], optional = true }
 clap = { version = "4.0", features = ["derive"] }
 anyhow = "1.0"
 serde_json = "1.0"
diff --git a/src/model.rs b/src/model.rs
index d798f20..40d1d44 100644
--- a/src/model.rs
+++ b/src/model.rs
@@ -1,11 +1,14 @@
 use anyhow::{anyhow, Context, Result};
 use half::f16;
+#[cfg(feature = "hf-hub")]
 use hf_hub::api::sync::Api;
 use ndarray::{Array2, ArrayView2, CowArray, Ix2};
 use safetensors::{tensor::Dtype, SafeTensors};
 use serde_json::Value;
 use std::borrow::Cow;
-use std::{env, fs, path::Path};
+#[cfg(feature = "hf-hub")]
+use std::env;
+use std::{fs, path::Path};
 use tokenizers::Tokenizer;
 
 /// Static embedding model for Model2Vec
@@ -379,9 +382,8 @@ fn resolve_model_files<P: AsRef<Path>>(
     token: Option<&str>,
     subfolder: Option<&str>,
 ) -> Result<ModelFiles> {
-    if let Some(tok) = token {
-        env::set_var("HF_HUB_TOKEN", tok);
-    }
+    #[cfg(not(feature = "hf-hub"))]
+    let _ = token;
 
     let (tokenizer, model, config) = {
         let base = repo_or_path.as_ref();
@@ -395,14 +397,17 @@ fn resolve_model_files<P: AsRef<Path>>(
             }
             (tokenizer, model, config)
         } else {
-            let api = Api::new().context("hf-hub API init failed")?;
-            let repo = api.model(repo_or_path.as_ref().to_string_lossy().into_owned());
-            let prefix = subfolder.map(|s| format!("{s}/")).unwrap_or_default();
-            (
-                repo.get(&format!("{prefix}tokenizer.json"))?,
-                repo.get(&format!("{prefix}model.safetensors"))?,
-                repo.get(&format!("{prefix}config.json"))?,
-            )
+            #[cfg(feature = "hf-hub")]
+            {
+                let files = download_model_files(repo_or_path.as_ref().to_string_lossy().as_ref(), token, subfolder)?;
+                (files.tokenizer, files.model, files.config)
+            }
+            #[cfg(not(feature = "hf-hub"))]
+            {
+                return Err(anyhow!(
+                    "remote model downloads require the `hf-hub` feature; pass a local model directory instead"
+                ));
+            }
         }
     };
 
@@ -412,3 +417,32 @@ fn resolve_model_files<P: AsRef<Path>>(
         config,
     })
 }
+
+#[cfg(feature = "hf-hub")]
+fn download_model_files(repo_id: &str, token: Option<&str>, subfolder: Option<&str>) -> Result<ModelFiles> {
+    let previous = token.and_then(|_| env::var_os("HF_HUB_TOKEN"));
+    if let Some(tok) = token {
+        env::set_var("HF_HUB_TOKEN", tok);
+    }
+
+    let result = (|| {
+        let api = Api::new().context("hf-hub API init failed")?;
+        let repo = api.model(repo_id.to_owned());
+        let prefix = subfolder.map(|s| format!("{s}/")).unwrap_or_default();
+        Ok(ModelFiles {
+            tokenizer: repo.get(&format!("{prefix}tokenizer.json"))?,
+            model: repo.get(&format!("{prefix}model.safetensors"))?,
+            config: repo.get(&format!("{prefix}config.json"))?,
+        })
+    })();
+
+    if token.is_some() {
+        if let Some(value) = previous {
+            env::set_var("HF_HUB_TOKEN", value);
+        } else {
+            env::remove_var("HF_HUB_TOKEN");
+        }
+    }
+
+    result
+}
diff --git a/tests/test_model.rs b/tests/test_model.rs
index 33f8b8f..6004a27 100644
--- a/tests/test_model.rs
+++ b/tests/test_model.rs
@@ -122,3 +122,13 @@ fn test_from_bytes_matches_from_pretrained_for_local_model() {
         );
     }
 }
+
+#[cfg(not(feature = "hf-hub"))]
+#[test]
+fn test_from_pretrained_remote_requires_hf_hub_feature() {
+    let err = StaticModel::from_pretrained("minishlab/potion-base-2M", None, None, None).unwrap_err();
+    assert!(
+        err.to_string().contains("hf-hub"),
+        "expected remote loading without hf-hub to mention the missing feature"
+    );
+}