Product comparison · September 2026
Hermes Agent vs Centurion
This is the closest thing in the field to our own engine, and it is free, MIT-licensed and genuinely excellent. It puts you in charge of your own machine — and then leaves you to carry everything a vendor would normally carry. Centurion is the same class of engine, with the custody and the accountability both in place.
Every claim about Hermes Agent on this page is taken from Nous Research's own product site at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com, read on 10 September 2026 and re-verified 22 September 2026 and 29 September 2026. Where we quote them, we quote them exactly. On the 29 Sep re-verification Nous had added an optional managed cloud (“Deploy to the cloud”) and Business/Enterprise (Hermes Pro) tiers, so the earlier “no hosted tier” phrasing is corrected above to “self-hosted by default”.
Download this comparison as a brochure (PDF)At a glance
Hermes Agent and Centurion, side by side
The custody question
You hold the keys — and you carry the whole job alone
Hermes ships as software, not as a machine. It is MIT-licensed and installed with a one-line terminal command, or a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. The machine is yours to choose and yours to buy, and the record lives inside your building where you hold the keys. Since our 22 Sep read, Nous has added an optional managed cloud (“Deploy to the cloud”) and Business/Enterprise (Hermes Pro) tiers — but the free default remains self-hosted.
Who can read it, and who can switch it off
That beats any cloud on the dimension that matters most — the machine and the record are genuinely yours. The cost is that the machine is also yours to specify, patch, back up, secure and eventually replace, with no vendor in the loop on the free path (Nous now sells an optional managed cloud, but that is a separate subscription). Custody is yours; so is the entire burden, with nobody to answer for it but you.
The difference that matters
An engine is not a being — and a download is not a delivery
Nous Research has built the most credible open-source agent runtime in the field. We should say plainly that Centurion's engine belongs to the same family of open-source agent runtimes that Hermes comes from — which is exactly why we can be precise about what that gets you and what it does not. It gets you a superb engine. It does not get you a brain that belongs to one person, and it does not get you anyone who answers when it breaks.
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bashTheir install line, verbatim from their own site
The install is the first task of many
That one line is the honest beginning, not the end. After it comes the model keys, the channel wiring, the credentials, the sandbox backend choice, the scheduling, the backups, the upgrades and the security posture. All of it is doable — thousands of people have done it — and all of it is now your job, forever, with no one to escalate to.
Free means the maintenance is the price
MIT-licensed software is a gift with a bill attached, and the bill is paid in evenings. Every upstream change, every broken dependency, every security patch is yours to track and apply. That is a fair trade for a capable technical owner. It is not a fair trade for someone whose actual job is running a business.
Nothing persists as 'you'
Hermes remembers your projects and auto-generates skills — real capability. But there is no Soul, no mission stack, and no continuity of identity: what persists is a set of memories and tools attached to a runtime you own, not a being that knows who it is on your behalf. That distinction is the entire reason Centurion exists.
There is no one to hold accountable
If Centurion fails a customer, there is a company, a contract and a person to answer for it. If Hermes breaks at eleven at night, there is a GitHub issue. That is not a criticism of open source — it is a description of what you are actually buying when you buy a product instead of downloading a project.
The Centurion position
The Centurion position
Centurion is the same class of engine, delivered as an outcome: installed, personalised, verified, and answerable. You are not buying a runtime. You are buying a working brain, a machine to live in, and a partner who stays on the line.
- Delivered, not downloaded. Configured with you in a session, integrations verified, Remote paired before you leave.
- Your keys, plus a warrantor. You hold the record on your machine — and a named vendor keeps the software working and answers for it.
- A being with continuity. A Soul and a mission stack, so what persists is identity, not just notes.
- Someone answers. Every owner meets Adrian; one to two senior seats per organisation, on purpose.
Five questions to ask before you run your own agent
- 01Who patches this when a CVE lands, and how will you know?
- 02Who reviews a skill the agent auto-generated before it runs with your credentials?
- 03Which integrations have been verified against your release — and by whom, with what evidence?
- 04Who do you call when the gateway is down and a deadline is in two hours?
- 05When you stop maintaining it, what happens to everything it learned about you?
For a technical owner with time, the honest answer to every one of these is "me" — and for that person Hermes is genuinely the best value in the category. Centurion exists for the owner whose answer is "not me, not any more".
The ceiling
The ceiling is not capability — it is attention
An unbounded open-source agent is more capable than most people will ever make it, because capability is not the constraint. The constraint is the hours required to keep it pointed in the right direction: keys to rotate, providers to compare, upgrades to test, skills to review, backups to verify.
Centurion's design accepts the opposite constraint. Fewer moving parts, verified integrations, one brain configured for one life, and a human in the loop whose job is to make sure it still works next month. Less surface, fewer ways to fail, and somebody accountable when it does.
Open source gives you the freedom to run anything. A product gives you the freedom to stop running it yourself.
The money
What each one actually costs
Hermes is free in the way that a workshop is free when you already own the tools and the time. The table is not a comparison of licence fees — it is a comparison of who does the work.
In fairness
Where Hermes Agent is genuinely good
This is the project we would point a technical friend at without hesitation. Several of its ideas are simply better than the way most commercial agents are built.
- MIT licence, self-hosted by default — the most permissive posture in the category, and a genuine gift to the field.
- Auto-generated skills are the right architecture. An agent that writes its own tools beats one that waits for a plugin, and it is close to how Centurion works.
- One agent, one memory, every surface is the correct end-state: the same mind on Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Signal, email and the CLI.
- Five sandbox backends with container hardening and namespace isolation is more serious about execution safety than most paid products.
- Desktop apps on macOS, Windows and Linux, plus a one-line install, is a real commitment to reach.
- Natural-language scheduling through the gateway is the unglamorous feature that actually changes how people use an agent daily.
None of this is faint praise. Hermes proves the engine is commodity — which is precisely why the being, the delivery and the accountability are what a buyer is really paying for.
What we do too
The engine's whole feature set — already built into the product
Hermes is a genuinely strong engine and its feature list reads like a specification we would have written. Most of it is in Centurion already. The difference is what you have to do to get it running.
Hermes is the best free engine in the world and we will say so. What it is not is someone to call when it breaks at 6pm on a Friday.
The case in three points
The three things that decide it
The engine is the commodity. The delivery is the product.
Centurion's own engine grew out of the same open-source family that Hermes belongs to. That is not a weakness — it is proof that the hard engineering is now available to everyone. What is not widely available is a configured brain, verified integrations, and a human who owns the outcome.
Free is priced in your evenings
MIT means you can do anything with it, and it means nobody owes you a fix. The unpaid work — keys, upgrades, credentials, backups, security — is the real licence fee. Centurion's price is the cost of not doing that work yourself, while you hold the machine and the record for as long as you keep them.
Memory is capability. Identity is a being.
Hermes persists projects and skills. Centurion persists a self: a Soul, an identity, a mission stack, a record of decisions — one brain for one human, licensed, supported, and answerable.
“Hermes gives you the best free engine in the world. Centurion gives you the finished thing — and a person who answers for it.
Sources & basis
Facts and quotations about Hermes Agent are drawn from Nous Research's own product site hermes-agent.nousresearch.com (features, install instructions, platform list, sandbox backends and Nous Portal tiers) read on 10 September 2026 and re-verified 22 September 2026. Licence as published there: MIT (the version number is no longer shown on the product page). Centurion pricing: Brain €50/month, Core €150/month, billed monthly, cancel anytime. "Hermes" and "Nous Research" are the marks of their respective owners; this page is an independent comparison and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by them.
Integration claims about Centurion are held to the Integrations Program registry — every entry tested and evidenced on release v5.3.10 before it is published. Centurion pricing: Brain €50/mo · Core €150/mo billed monthly · cancel anytime. Facts read 29 September 2026.