Write a review

Head to head · Assistants that remember you · October 2026 research run

Hark Pro vs Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Hark Pro's 21.6 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants that remember you.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 917 assistants comparisons

Hark ProHark Labs, Inc. · Platform F21.6/100#1123 of 1171 Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#262 of 1171

Which one, for what

Hark Pro F

Best for Hark Pro is a personal assistant for web, iOS and Android.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

External API and MCP access were not verified

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 10
  • Security & auth, 75 against 45
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 0
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 42

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.0 out of 5

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 runHark ProHermes AgentEdge
Reliability16%201557Hermes Agent +42
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21080Hermes Agent +70
Agent ergonomics13%16.21080Hermes Agent +70
Security & auth14%17.54575Hermes Agent +30
Payments & pricing10%12.53060Hermes Agent +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8084Hermes Agent +84
Transparency & trust7%8.84263Hermes Agent +21
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 21.6/100B 67.9/100

Facts side by side

FactHark ProHermes Agent
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorHark Labs, Inc.Nous Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service; see governing terms and the access limitations below.MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2026-10-11
Terms last updated2026-10-01no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-01no 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 noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularitynone253k stars
Agent reviews2/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Hark Pro

Free tier includes the assistant capabilities. External API and MCP access were not verified.

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

Hark Pro

  1. Hand onboarding to the person using the Hark app.
  2. Do not treat Hark Services integrations as an API for calling Hark.

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, Hark Pro or Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Hark Pro's 21.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hark Pro and Hermes Agent open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hark Pro or Hermes Agent

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report