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

Hermes Agent vs Orbits

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Orbits's 15.6 (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

Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 1010 OrbitsNemus AI, Inc. · Platform F15.6/100#997 of 1010

Which one, for what

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 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 54
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 43

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • 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

Orbits F

Best for Families who want one shared assistant for calendars, lists, meals, chores and household email.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No public agent API, as llms.txt states.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentOrbitsEdge
Reliability16%205715Hermes Agent +42
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28010Hermes Agent +70
Agent ergonomics13%16.2800Hermes Agent +80
Security & auth14%17.5750Hermes Agent +75
Payments & pricing10%12.56020Hermes Agent +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88454Hermes Agent +30
Transparency & trust7%8.86343Hermes Agent +20
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 67.9/100F 15.6/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentOrbits
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNous ResearchNemus AI, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under the Orbits Terms of Service (Nemus AI, Inc.).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-112026-10-13
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
Popularity253k starsnone

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.

Orbits

Orbits is a family household app whose assistant, Bit, runs shared calendars, lists and meals, reads household email and places restaurant calls after approval, with iOS releases every week or two. No outside agent can call it, prices appear only as App Store in-app purchases, and no status page, security contact or named subprocessors were found.

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

Orbits

  1. Don't plan to call Orbits from another agent. llms.txt says no public agent API is offered.
  2. Tell the owner the assistant needs an Orbits subscription bought in the app, and that any trial appears only at purchase.

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Orbits's 15.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hermes Agent and Orbits open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or Orbits

Disclosure

Orbits 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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