Hermes Agent vs Vellum

Hermes Agent

• Developers who want an agent on their own machine, server or VPS
• Reaching one agent from Telegram, Discord, Slack or WhatsApp
• Unattended scheduled jobs such as reports and briefings

Vellum

• People who want one assistant that remembers them across devices and chat apps
• Handing off email triage, calendar work and recurring background tasks
• Users who want to inspect or self-host the assistant's open-source runtime

Hermes Agent

• The agent is free, but paid models cost extra: your own provider's rates, or Nous Portal tiers from $20 a month.
• Desktop apps are offered for macOS and Windows; on Linux the install is through the terminal.
• The platform support page lists no iOS version, and Android runs only through a prerelease Termux package.
• Hermes Cloud needs $2 of Nous credit or an active subscription to deploy, and bills inference separately from the instance.

Vellum

• The Base plan is free to host, but model usage, web search and image generation are paid for in prepaid credits at $1 per credit.
• Included monthly usage does not roll over, and pay-as-you-go credits expire twelve months after purchase.
• The docs describe the Windows app as a dev build tied to Vellum's development environment, and no Linux desktop client is shipped.
• The iOS and Android apps are clients for a cloud assistant; they do not run a local assistant on the phone.

Hermes Agent

Messaging gateway

One gateway connects the agent to Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Matrix, email, Microsoft Teams and other platforms, more than 20 in all, sharing a single memory.

Memory and self-written skills

The agent keeps memory across sessions, creates reusable skills from work it has done and revises them in use. Skills follow the open agentskills.io format.

Scheduled automations

Built-in cron accepts natural-language schedules for reports, backups and briefings and delivers the results to any connected platform.

Subagents

Isolated subagents with their own conversations and terminals handle parallel workstreams without filling the main agent's context.

Terminal backends and sandboxing

Commands run locally or in Docker, over SSH, or on Daytona, Singularity, Modal or Vercel Sandbox, with command approval and container isolation.

Nous Portal and Hermes Cloud

A Portal subscription supplies credits for 200+ models and hosted web search, image generation, text-to-speech and browser tools. Hermes Cloud hosts an always-on agent, billed daily.

Vellum

Long-term memory

The assistant keeps facts, preferences and people in a personal knowledge base and recalls them across conversations. On your own machine the workspace is plain-text files plus a SQLite database.

Skills for your work tools

Built-in skills and OAuth integrations cover Google Workspace, Outlook, Slack, Notion, Linear, GitHub, HubSpot, Asana and Todoist. More skills come from a catalog or are written yourself.

Permission prompts

Sensitive actions such as file access, shell commands or emailing a new contact show an Allow or Deny prompt with a risk badge until you create a trust rule for them.

One assistant on every channel

The same identity, memory and schedules are available from the web, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android apps, a CLI, Telegram, Slack, email, voice and phone calls.

Computer and browser control

The desktop app adds voice input and computer control, and a Chrome extension lets the assistant read open tabs, fill in forms and act on the page in front of you.

Cloud, local or self-hosted

Run it in Vellum Cloud, locally on a Mac or Windows PC, or self-hosted on a Linux host or your own Google Cloud project, bringing your own model API key.

Hermes Agent

• Hermes Agent$0

  The complete MIT-licensed agent, run on your own machine or server with a model provider of your choice.

• Nous Portal Free$0

  Free models only, standard rate limits and no monthly credits.

• Nous Portal Plus$20

  per month

  $22 of monthly credits (a 10% bonus) with a $10 rollover cap, 200+ models, hosted tool usage and high rate limits.

• Nous Portal Super$100

  per month

  $110 of monthly credits with a $50 rollover cap, plus the same models, hosted tools and rate limits as Plus.

• Nous Portal Ultra$200

  per month

  $220 of monthly credits with a $100 rollover cap, plus the same models, hosted tools and rate limits as Plus.

• Hermes CloudFrom $0.56

  per day while running, billed from Nous credit

  Optional always-on hosting: Medium is $0.56 a day and Large $1.09 while running, $0.03 a day stopped. Inference and tool usage are billed separately.

Vellum

• Base$0

  Free forever: a Small cloud machine (1 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM), 6 GiB of storage and managed model access paid for with pay-as-you-go credits.

• Self-hosted$0

  The open-source runtime on your own Mac, Windows PC, Linux host or GCP project, with your own model API key and no platform or machine fees.

• Mighty$30

  per month

  Small machine, 10 GiB of storage and a monthly Mighty Usage allowance. Leaves out the custom subdomain, static IP and priority support.

• CustomFrom $50

  per month

  Pick a machine size, storage tier and optional usage bundle yourself. The minimum is a Medium machine with 10 GiB and no usage bundle.

• Super$100

  per month

  Medium machine (2.5 vCPU, 5 GiB), 30 GiB of storage and Super Usage, plus an assistant email, custom subdomain, static IP and priority support.

• Ultra$200

  per month

  Large machine (4 vCPU, 8 GiB), 60 GiB of storage and Ultra Usage, with the same assistant email, subdomain and support as Super.