diff --git a/tests/test_litellm/litellm_core_utils/test_token_counter.py b/tests/test_litellm/litellm_core_utils/test_token_counter.py
index 324bace0e96..92c070501b4 100644
--- a/tests/test_litellm/litellm_core_utils/test_token_counter.py
+++ b/tests/test_litellm/litellm_core_utils/test_token_counter.py
@@ -200,7 +200,12 @@ def test_tokenizers():
             model="meta-llama/llama-3-70b-instruct", text=sample_text
         )
 
-        llama3_tokenizer = create_pretrained_tokenizer("Xenova/llama-3-tokenizer")
+        try:
+            llama3_tokenizer = create_pretrained_tokenizer("Xenova/llama-3-tokenizer")
+        except Exception as e:
+            pytest.skip(
+                f"custom tokenizer download failed (HF hub unreachable): {e}"
+            )
         llama3_tokens_2 = token_counter(
             custom_tokenizer=llama3_tokenizer, text=sample_text
         )