Hermes Agentvs Manus

Manus is a closed-source general AI agent from Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd., a Singapore company. By default it runs each task in a temporary cloud sandbox, and its terms for individual users forbid reverse engineering the service. Hermes Agent is open source under the MIT license, which allows commercial use. Its code is on GitHub, and you can modify it or add tools through its plugin system.

Hermes Agent runs on your computer, a server or a VPS. Its shell commands can run locally, in a Docker container, over SSH, or in Modal, Daytona or Vercel Sandbox. If you do not want to keep a machine on, Hermes Cloud hosts your agent on a dedicated, always-on instance in the nearest available region. Every paid Nous Portal plan includes one Hermes Cloud agent; larger or extra agents bill daily from credits. Its files, memory and configuration persist whether it is running or stopped.

Manus also offers a Cloud Computer, a persistent virtual machine you can purchase for projects that need to keep running, and its desktop app, Manus Studio, can work in a folder you choose on a Mac or Windows PC.

Hermes Agent works with any OpenAI-compatible API. One Nous Portal login covers hundreds of models and hosted tools, and the provider list includes OpenRouter and dozens of others. A ChatGPT sign-in goes through the Codex provider and uses Codex models; SuperGrok and X Premium+ subscribers can also sign in. Local models run through Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp or SGLang with no account.

You pick the provider and the model, and /model switches mid-session while conversation history, memory and skills carry over. Fallback providers are opt-in with hermes fallback, and Hermes Agent never switches models on a Nous Portal plan limit by itself: it says what ran out and offers free models, waiting for the reset, or credits. The status line shows the model in use.

Manus picks the model for each task by default. It offers its own modes (Manus 2.0 Lite, Manus 2.0 and Manus 2.0 Max), and free daily refresh credits work only in Lite. Manus Flex, launched in September 2026, lets you power Manus with your own API key from a supported provider; the first partners are OpenRouter, Fireworks and Modal. The provider bills inference directly, and other services in each task still use Manus credits.

Through one gateway, Hermes Agent connects to more than 20 messaging platforms, including Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage through BlueBubbles, Microsoft Teams, LINE and email. Scheduled jobs can post their results to those chats, and in Telegram and Discord it can send spoken replies. One gateway owns every session, so the CLI, TUI, Hermes Desktop, bots and cron share one conversation.

A Hermes Agent mobile app is in beta and coming soon. Today you message it from your phone through a chat app, or use Hermes Desktop in your phone's browser with the Webapp.

Manus Agents work in Telegram on every plan, and in LINE and Slack. You can also start a task by forwarding an email to your Mail Manus address. Manus's separate Cue app, which currently requires an invitation code, supports iMessage, Telegram, LINE and Slack.

Hermes Agent stores conversations, memory and skills in the Hermes Agent home directory on the machine that runs it (~/.hermes on macOS and Linux). Model requests go only to the providers you configure. With local models, model requests stay on your computer. Hermes Agent collects no telemetry by default; usage-metrics sharing is opt-in, and those metrics leave out prompts and responses.

Manus stores data in the US and Singapore. Its privacy policy covers files, shell commands and their outputs, code and task logs from its sandbox.

Hermes Agent maintains two curated memory files, a profile of your preferences and its own notes on your environment and what it has learned, and loads them at the start of every session. It stores every terminal and chat session and can search them all with full-text search.

When it works out a non-trivial workflow, it saves the approach as a skill and refines it with use. You can require review before a skill change lands, and a background curator archives skills that go unused.

Manus carries context through Projects, which apply a master instruction and a knowledge base of files to every new task in a project. Its user knowledge base holds up to 100 entries on Pro and 50 on Free, and you can ask Manus to save a successful task as a Skill.