# Hermes Agent

> Open-source AI agent with persistent memory and a messaging gateway

Hermes Agent is an open-source autonomous agent from Nous Research that runs on your own computer, on a server or in the company's hosted cloud. It keeps memory between sessions, writes its own reusable skills, runs scheduled jobs, and is reached from a terminal, a desktop app or messaging platforms such as Telegram, Discord, Slack and WhatsApp. The software is MIT licensed and free; model access comes from any provider you connect or from Nous Portal, an optional credit subscription.

- **Category:** AI Agents
- **Made by:** Nous Research, Inc.
- **Website:** https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
- **Runs on:** Web, macOS, Windows, Linux
- **Facts last checked:** Oct 5, 2026

## Pricing

Hermes Agent has a free plan. Paid plans start at $20 per month for the optional Nous Portal Plus tier; the agent is free.

- **Pricing model:** Free plan
- **Free plan:** Hermes Agent is free and open source under the MIT license. You connect your own model provider, or a free Nous Portal account that is limited to free models.
- **Free trial:** None listed.

| Plan | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 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 Cloud | From $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. |

Read from https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com on Oct 5, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Hermes Agent before buying.

## Key features

- **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.

## Good for

- 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

## Worth knowing

- 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.

## Works with

Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Microsoft Teams, Matrix, Home Assistant

**Tags:** AI agents, Open source, Self-hostable, Chat assistant, Workflow automation

## Alternatives

- [OpenClaw](https://toolgpa.com/tools/openclaw): Open-source personal AI agent you run yourself and message in chat. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-openclaw)
- [NanoClaw](https://toolgpa.com/tools/nanoclaw): Open-source personal AI agent that runs in containers you host. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-nanoclaw)
- [Agent Zero](https://toolgpa.com/tools/agent-zero): Open-source agent framework that works in its own Linux computer. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-hermes-agent)
- [goose](https://toolgpa.com/tools/goose): Open-source AI agent with a desktop app, CLI and API. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/goose-vs-hermes-agent)
- [Poke](https://toolgpa.com/tools/poke): AI assistant you text in Messages, WhatsApp or Telegram. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-poke)

## Sources

The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 5, 2026:

- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs
- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/getting-started/platform-support
- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/integrations/nous-portal
- https://portal.nousresearch.com/cloud

Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/hermes-agent
Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).