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Hermes Agent (Nous Research) alternatives (2026)
Hermes Agent (Nous Research) is a frameworks tool: Open-source agent harness; v0.21.7 stable shipped Oct 12, v0.22.0 RCs Oct 13-14. Pricing, as the maker states it: Open source. Its GitHub repo has 253,590 stars. We found 132 tools in the directory that do overlapping work (building AI agents, research, open-source agents); 126 of them are open source and 2 list a free or freemium plan. Below are the 10 closest, ranked by how many tasks and sub-tasks they share with Hermes Agent (Nous Research), then by GitHub stars.
Updated
Quick comparison Top 10 of 11 listed below. Pricing as the maker states it; blank means we don't have it.
| Tool | Pricing | Best for | Open source |
|---|---|---|---|
 FrontierAgent | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 DeepSeek Harness | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 Ruflo | Open source | Build multi-agent systems | Yes |
 OpenHuman | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 AstrBot | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 AIOS | See site | Control a computer | |
 TrueForge | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 Raven | Open source | Write code | Yes |
 AWorld | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
 IBM CUGA | Open source | Build an agent | Yes |
- FrontierAgent (Open source): Open-source agent runtime and terminal app for long-horizon research and file work, with single-agent ReAct and parallel agent-team modes. Consider it because it also covers running many agents in parallel and terminal and CLI agents.
- DeepSeek Harness (Open source): DeepSeek's open-source agent harness with a local web UI, built so that every tool, model and scheduled task is a swappable plugin; still a developer preview. Consider it because it also covers local and self-hosted.
- Ruflo (Open source): Open-source multi-agent meta-harness for Claude Code, Codex, and MCP clients; Oct 13 release adds Mods (mission workflows) and a single control plane with human approval. Consider it because it also covers running many agents in parallel and workflow automation.
- OpenHuman (Open source): Lightweight open-source agent harness designed to run many agents cheaply on small servers. Consider it because it also covers running many agents in parallel and images and design.
- AstrBot (Open source): Open-source agent chatbot platform and framework that connects LLMs, plugins and tools to mainstream messaging apps for assistants, support bots and knowledge bases. Consider it because it also covers RAG and documents.
- AIOS (See site): Research AI agent operating system that handles scheduling, context switching, memory, storage and tool management for LLM-based agents. Consider it because it also covers memory and mobile and remote control.
- TrueForge (Open source): Open-source agent harness runtime that turns an LLM into a working agent. Consider it because it does the same job with a different approach (open source).
- Raven (Open source): Host agent that plans complex jobs as task graphs and coordinates built-in and third-party agents for research, coding, design and on-call work. Consider it because it also covers SRE and incident response and planning and task tracking.
- AWorld (Open source): Agent harness from inclusionAI for building expert agents that search, reproduce and improve on ideas with their own tools and memory. Consider it because it also covers memory.
- IBM CUGA (Open source): IBM Research's configurable generalist agent (CUGA) for enterprise web and API tasks, with a live demo on Hugging Face Spaces. Consider it because it also covers rules, skills and config.
Hermes Agent (Nous Research) vs alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Pricing | Open source / licence | GitHub stars | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hermes Agent (Nous Research) | Open source | MIT | 253,590 | building AI agents, research |
| FrontierAgent | Open source | Yes | 5,312 | coding in the terminal, building AI agents |
| DeepSeek Harness | Open source | MIT | 251,853 | building AI agents, open-source agents |
| Ruflo | Open source | MIT | 74,609 | automating workflows, building AI agents |
| OpenHuman | Open source | GNU GPL v3.0 | 42,113 | building AI agents, open-source agents |
| AstrBot | Open source | GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 | 42,095 | automating workflows, building AI agents |
| AIOS | See site | no licence (the LICENSE file is empty) | 6,492 | controlling a computer, building AI agents |
| TrueForge | Open source | MIT | 6,247 | building AI agents, open-source agents |
| Raven | Open source | Yes | 5,518 | writing code, building AI agents |
| AWorld | Open source | Yes | 1,243 | building AI agents, research |
| IBM CUGA | Open source | Apache License 2.0 | 1,012 | building AI agents, research |
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Alternatives are picked from directory data only: same category plus shared tasks and sub-tasks. Pricing is as each maker states it; GitHub stars as recorded on each listing.