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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against AstrBot's 58.8 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. AstrBot leads on reliability. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

AstrBotAstrBotDevs · Agent harness C58.8/100#584 of 986 Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 986

Which one, for what

AstrBot C

Best for Someone who wants one self-run bot answering on QQ, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Lark or WeCom, in private or group chats, with scheduled tasks, a knowledge base and plugins.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 81 against 57

Watch for

No approval step before any tool call. The agent sends messages, creates scheduled tasks and calls MCP tools without asking

Hermes Agent B

Best for A technical owner who wants one always-on agent across chat apps with memory and scheduled jobs, on their own machine or a small server, with any model.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 54
  • Security & auth, 75 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 40

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

The default terminal backend runs commands on the host, and the default smart mode lets an auxiliary model approve commands it rates low-risk

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotHermes AgentEdge
Reliability16%208157AstrBot +24
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26280Hermes Agent +18
Agent ergonomics13%16.25480Hermes Agent +26
Security & auth14%17.54475Hermes Agent +31
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88184Hermes Agent +3
Transparency & trust7%8.84063Hermes Agent +23
Negative events≤15-2-3
TotalC 58.8/100B 67.9/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotHermes Agent
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAstrBotDevsNous Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-272026-10-11
Terms last updated2026-01-12no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity42k stars253k stars

Verdicts

AstrBot

Fourteen official messaging adapters, scheduled tasks and scoped API keys come in one AGPL-3.0 program with releases most weeks. No tool call asks for approval, no mail, calendar or long-term memory connector is built in, and usage statistics, including the machine's hostname, are sent by default.

Hermes Agent

Card payments always ask first and are refused in unattended sessions, and the messaging gateway denies every sender until an allowlist is set. Shell commands run on the host by default with a model judging risk, and sending mail through the Google Workspace skill is held back only by an instruction to the model.

Before you call either

AstrBot

  1. Set ASTRBOT_DISABLE_METRICS=1 before the first start. Statistics, including the hostname, are sent to tickstats.soulter.top by default
  2. Set dashboard.host to 127.0.0.1 in data/cmd_config.json, or the DASHBOARD_HOST variable, unless remote access is intended. The default is 0.0.0.0
  3. Create an abk_ key in Settings, OpenAPI with only the scopes needed, and send it as Authorization: Bearer or X-API-Key
  4. Include username in every POST /api/v1/chat body. Without the chat:admin scope an administrator ID is rejected
  5. Check Extensions, Future Tasks after asking for a schedule. One-off tasks are deleted after their run even when the run fails

Hermes Agent

  1. Set approvals.mode: manual before giving it real accounts. The default smart lets an auxiliary model approve commands
  2. Run the gateway with terminal.backend: docker or the project's Docker image when it reads mail, web pages or group chats
  3. Set memory.write_approval: true and skills.write_approval: true to review what it saves about the owner
  4. Leave approvals.cron_mode and approvals.unattended_mode at deny for scheduled and webhook runs
  5. Set TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS or the matching allowlist per channel. Never set GATEWAY_ALLOW_ALL_USERS=true

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against AstrBot's 58.8 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. AstrBot leads on reliability.

Are AstrBot and Hermes Agent open source?

Yes. AstrBot is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later). Hermes Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with AstrBot or Hermes Agent

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