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Best Model for Hermes Agent

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the best all-round model for Hermes Agent: it scores 61.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, a benchmark of long terminal tasks, and costs about $5.33 per 100 coding-agent requests on our measured traffic. Hermes needs at least 64K tokens of context for tool use and by default sends auxiliary tasks such as context compression to your main model, so that model's price applies to every call. Claude Opus 5.5 (64.9%) is the pick for runs that must finish unattended, and Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash keep always-on loops cheap.

Read the full Hermes review → · updated 2026-10-17

Sources: Hermes Agent provider docs · Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard · Anthropic on Haiku 5.5 · DeepSeek V4.1 Flash release · Cost per request methodology

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Or let the router send each step to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed. Plans from $19 a month.

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#1Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic · $4.40/1M · 1M ctx

Best overall. 61.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, second only to Opus 5.5, at half its price. Hermes talks to Anthropic's Messages API natively, and Sonnet 5.5 has a 1M-token context with no long-prompt surcharge.

Overall 96/100 · Value 59Full breakdown →
#2Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic · $8.80/1M · 1M ctx

Best for long agent runs. #1 on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 64.9%. Worth the doubled rates when Hermes works through a long task with nobody watching and a failed run costs more than the tokens.

Overall 98/100 · Value 51Full breakdown →
#3Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic · $0.22/1M · 1M ctx

Best value. Anthropic reports 39.2% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at $0.10/$0.50 per million tokens. A good auxiliary model for compression and summaries; prompts over 100K tokens cost five times as much.

Overall 82/100 · Value 97Full breakdown →
#4DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDeepSeek · $0.22/1M · 1.0M ctx

Budget pick. Open weights under the MIT license at $0.30/$1.20 per million tokens at peak hours and half that off-peak. DeepSeek reports 42.3% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 for its October 17 update, up from 31.2%, so keep it to routine steps.

Overall 77/100 · Value 93Full breakdown →
#5GLM 5.3Z.AI · $1.50/1M · 1.0M ctx

Open-weight pick. The highest-scoring open-weight model on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (41.8%), with a 1M-token context, for setups that self-host or want open weights.

Overall 83/100 · Value 69Full breakdown →
#6GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI · $4.40/1M · 1.1M ctx

OpenAI pick. 58.2% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at the same $2/$10 list price as Sonnet 5.5. Requests over 272K input tokens bill at $4/$15.

Overall 92/100 · Value 58Full breakdown →

What 100 Hermes requests cost on each pick

A typical request sends 99,534 input tokens, 87% of them read from cache, and a median session runs 16 requests. Measured on pooled coding-agent requests through our gateway (79,301 requests from 75 users; Hermes alone has fewer than 50 users, so its traffic is pooled), Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026, priced at each vendor's list rates.

Model100 requestsMedian sessionMonth of regular use
Claude Sonnet 5.5$5.33$0.74$77.42
Claude Opus 5.5$10.66$1.47$155
Claude Haiku 5.5$1.31$0.096$17.73
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash$0.67$0.091$9.13
GLM 5.3$5.72$0.71$92.16
GPT-6.1 Sol$6.74$0.74$90.04

Month of regular use = the median user active on 5 or more days (1,478 requests in 30 days). Methodology · All models ranked by cost per request

Best model for Hermes under $19, $49 or $99 a month

The highest-rated model whose list-price cost for a month of regular use (1,478 requests) stays under each budget. Heavier months cost proportionally more.

Monthly budgetBest model that fitsEst. month
Under $19Claude Haiku 5.5$17.73
Under $49Claude Haiku 5.5$17.73
Under $99Claude Sonnet 5.5$77.42

"Highest-rated" uses our editorial quality and agentic scores; candidates are current models with a checked vendor price.

FAQ

What is the best model for Hermes Agent?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 for most work: 61.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at $2/$10 per million tokens. Step up to Claude Opus 5.5 (64.9%) for long unattended tasks, and use Claude Haiku 5.5 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash where cost matters more than the hardest reasoning.
How much context does Hermes Agent need?
Hermes's docs say it needs at least 64,000 tokens of context for agent use with tools. Every model on this page offers 1M tokens or more, so the limit mainly matters for small local models.
Can Hermes use a cheaper model for background tasks?
Yes. Auxiliary tasks such as compression go to your main chat model by default, and you can route each one to a cheaper provider and model in the auxiliary settings. A small model such as Claude Haiku 5.5 or GPT-6 Luna there lowers the cost of long sessions.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 still a good choice for Hermes?
It still works, but Claude Sonnet 5.5 replaced it at a lower price ($2/$10 per million tokens against $3/$15). On our measured traffic 100 requests cost $9.74 on Sonnet 4.6 and $5.33 on Sonnet 5.5.
How much do 100 Hermes requests cost?
At vendor list prices, 100 average coding-agent requests cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5 $5.33, Claude Opus 5.5 $10.66, Claude Haiku 5.5 $1.31, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash $0.67, GLM 5.3 $5.72, GPT-6.1 Sol $6.74. Measured on real coding-agent traffic through the Standard Compute gateway (Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026), priced with each request's own token counts and cache reads.
What is the best model for Hermes on a $19, $49 or $99 monthly budget?
For a month of regular use (1,478 requests, the median in our data), the highest-rated model that fits under $19: Claude Haiku 5.5 (about $17.73); under $49: Claude Haiku 5.5 (about $17.73); under $99: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (about $77.42). Heavier months cost proportionally more.

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