# Hermes Agent vs IronClaw

> Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) to IronClaw's 66.7 (B) for assistant proactive. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.min.md (~580 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-12

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do assistant proactive.

- Hermes Agent: grade B, 67.9/100, rank #244 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hermes-agent.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hermes-agent.json
- IronClaw: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #288 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ironclaw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json
- Best AI personal assistants that act for one person: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/personal-assistants/index.md
- All 190 assistants comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/personal-assistants/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Hermes Agent (B)

Good 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 74
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 69
- Security & auth, 75 against 66
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 74

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card

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

### IronClaw (B)

Good for: One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 67 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 63

Watch for: Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Hermes Agent | IronClaw | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 67 | IronClaw +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 74 | Hermes Agent +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 69 | Hermes Agent +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 75 | 66 | Hermes Agent +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 84 | 74 | Hermes Agent +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 75 | IronClaw +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **67.9 · B** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Hermes Agent | IronClaw |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Nous Research | NEAR AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-11 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 253k stars | 13k stars |

## Verdicts

**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.

**IronClaw.** Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as `gmail.send_message`, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

## Before you call either

### 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`

### IronClaw

1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
2. Install with the release installer and run `ironclaw onboard`. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
3. Call `POST /api/v1/responses` with the bearer token from `~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token`. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Hermes Agent or IronClaw?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

### Are Hermes Agent and IronClaw open source?

Yes. Hermes Agent is open source (MIT). IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "hermes-agent", "b": "ironclaw"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare hermes-agent ironclaw`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hermes-agent.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json

## Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or IronClaw

- [AstrBot vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [AstrBot vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [CowAgent vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cowagent-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [CowAgent vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cowagent-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [GAIA vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gaia-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [GAIA vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gaia-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Gemini Spark vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-spark-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [Gemini Spark vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-spark-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [Grok Bot vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Haven vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/haven-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [Haven vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/haven-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Instinct](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-instinct.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Leon](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-leon.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Lindy](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-lindy.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs nanobot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-nanobot.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs NanoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-nanoclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Dots](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-openai-dots.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs OpenClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-openclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs PicoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-picoclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-poke.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-zeroclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs Zo Computer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-zo-computer.md)
- [Instinct vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instinct-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Leon](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-leon.md)
- [IronClaw vs Lindy](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-lindy.md)
- [IronClaw vs nanobot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanobot.md)
- [IronClaw vs NanoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Dots](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openai-dots.md)
- [IronClaw vs OpenClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs PicoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-picoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.md)
- [IronClaw vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zeroclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Zo Computer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zo-computer.md)