General reasoning and benchmark headroom.
SituationalNous: Hermes 4 405B is a budget text-first model from nousresearch with a heavy runtime profile, extended context posture, and the clearest fit around long-context research / reasoning.
Benchmark blend
Dev workflow signal
Extended
Budget tier
Nous: Hermes 4 405B currently reads as a budget text-first option with extended context and a heavy runtime profile.
Decision Strip
Core buy-side signals stay in one pass. The rest of the page expands only after intelligence, speed, context, and price are clear.
General reasoning and benchmark headroom.
SituationalLatency data is partial.
SituationalHow much prompt and task state can stay in view.
Competitive$3.00 output / 1M
EfficientEditorial Profile
Positioning, tradeoffs, and fit are consolidated into one read instead of repeating the same story across separate cards.
Hermes 4 is a large-scale reasoning model built on Meta-Llama-3.1-405B and released by Nous Research. It introduces a hybrid reasoning mode, where the model can choose to deliberate internally with <think>...</think> traces or respond directly, offering flexibility between speed and depth. Users can control the reasoning behaviour with the `reasoning` `enabled` boolean. [Learn more in our docs](https://openrouter.ai/docs/use-cases/reasoning-tokens#enable-reasoning-with-default-config) The model is instruction-tuned with an expanded post-training corpus (~60B tokens) emphasizing reasoning traces, improving performance in math, code, STEM, and logical reasoning, while retaining broad assistant utility. It also supports structured outputs, including JSON mode, schema adherence, function calling, and tool use. Hermes 4 is trained for steerability, lower refusal rates, and alignment toward neutral, user-directed behavior.
nousresearch text-first profile
Long-context research / Reasoning with extended context and heavy runtime.
Efficient spend profile. More comfortable for sustained prompt volume if the capability fit is right.
Large context headroom supports repo-wide prompts and long research sessions.
Budget-friendly input pricing is a strength, but raw capability may vary by workload.
Latency profile is better for deliberate runs than rapid back-and-forth chat.
Current metadata points to a text-first profile rather than a broad multimodal one.
Long-context summarization, repo analysis, and policy or document review.
Benchmarks
Only benchmark categories with actual signal are shown. Secondary values stay as simple definitions instead of nested micro-cards.
Specs & Pricing
Specs stay neutral, pricing gets emphasis through values rather than extra containers. Raw provider internals remain in metadata at the end.
This model is relatively efficient on price. It is the easier fit when sustained prompt volume matters.
Metadata
Verification details remain available, but the page no longer forces them ahead of the editorial read.