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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

Brea vs Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Brea's 12.9 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

BreaBrea AI LLC · Platform F12.9/100#1001 of 1010 Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 1010

Which one, for what

Brea F

Best for An iPhone user who wants an assistant across many apps and websites with per-action approval.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Hermes Agent loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

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

  • Reliability, 57 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 0
  • Security & auth, 75 against 7
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 4
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 48

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

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 runBreaHermes AgentEdge
Reliability16%201557Hermes Agent +42
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21080Hermes Agent +70
Agent ergonomics13%16.2080Hermes Agent +80
Security & auth14%17.5775Hermes Agent +68
Payments & pricing10%12.52060Hermes Agent +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8484Hermes Agent +80
Transparency & trust7%8.84863Hermes Agent +15
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 12.9/100B 67.9/100

Facts side by side

FactBreaHermes Agent
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorBrea AI LLCNous Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Brea's terms (Brea AI LLC, last updated 2 July 2026).MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last releasenone2026-10-11
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularitynone253k stars

Verdicts

Brea

Brea is an iMessage assistant with a free plan that needs no card, approval by reply before it sends, deletes or pays, and one-time Link cards for purchases. No outside agent can call it, paid prices sit inside the app, and no changelog or subprocessor list was found.

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

Brea

  1. Don't plan to call Brea from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage thread.
  2. Tell the owner that replying ALWAYS stops Brea asking again for that action.

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, Brea or Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Brea's 12.9 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Brea and Hermes Agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Brea. Hermes Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Brea or Hermes Agent

Disclosure

Brea competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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