You can run Hermes Agent without paying anyone. The software is MIT-licensed, and there are a handful of places to run it and models to power it that genuinely cost $0. Each one has a catch, though, and a couple of the popular answers from earlier this year have quietly stopped working. Here is where things stand in September 2026.
First, what "free" has to cover
A Hermes bot needs three things:
- The software. Free, always.
- A machine that stays on. If it sleeps, your Telegram bot stops answering.
- A model. Hermes does not run a model itself. It calls one over the internet or on your own hardware.
For sizing: Hermes needs about 1 GB of RAM for chat-only use, and 2 GB is comfortable. We measured 31 live Hermes containers at a median of 282 MB, with busy turns touching 1.1 GB. The system requirements guide has the full breakdown. Below that 1 GB minimum, expect crashes on busy turns.
Free places to run Hermes
1. A computer you already own
The only option that is free with no strings. Hermes runs on Linux, macOS and Windows (natively or through WSL2), and on arm64 as well as x86, so an old laptop or a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with 2 GB or more will do for chat-only use.
The catch: the bot is only online while the machine is on and awake. Disable sleep, plug it into ethernet if you can, and expect a restart after every power cut or OS update. Electricity is close to nothing. An idle Mac mini draws about 4 watts, for example.
2. Oracle Cloud Always Free
For years this was the standard answer: 4 Arm cores and 24 GB of RAM, free forever. On 18 August 2026 Oracle cut the Always Free Ampere A1 allowance to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory, per its own documentation. That is still plenty for Hermes.
The catch: Oracle's community forum has a string of reports of Always Free A1 instances being disabled, including by people who had already shrunk to the new limit. Capacity in popular regions is also hard to get. Keep a backup of your ~/.hermes folder and do not make this the only place your bot lives.
3. Google Cloud's free e2-micro
Google's free tier includes one small e2-micro VM in select US regions. It has 1 GB of memory, which is Hermes's floor, not its comfort zone. It works for a light chat-only bot with swap enabled. Turn on the browser toolset and it will struggle.
4. Free platform tiers (mostly too small)
Railway's free tier caps a service at 0.5 GB of RAM, below what Hermes needs. Hermes Cloud from Nous has no free tier: its instances start at $0.56 a day and need $2 of credit to deploy. So neither is a real free option.
5. A free trial of managed hosting
OpenClaw Launch gives you a real Hermes Agent for 30 minutes at $0, no card required, with free models, a built-in browser and full command execution. It is not permanent hosting, but it is the fastest way to find out whether Hermes is what you want before you spend an evening on a server.
Free models for Hermes
- OpenRouter
:freemodels. A rotating set of free models behind one key. Rate-limited, deprioritised at busy times, and the list changes often. Configure a fallback model for anything scheduled. - Nous Portal free tier. $0 a month, no credits, access to the free-model catalogue at 50 requests per minute. See our Nous Portal guide.
- A local model through Ollama or llama.cpp. No provider quota, and the model runs on your own machine. A 7B model quantised to 4 bits needs roughly 6 GB of RAM, so it suits a desktop. On Oracle's 12 GB Arm instance it can run, but slowly on CPU. Small local models are noticeably weaker at multi-step tool calls. See Hermes Agent with Ollama.
One route to skip: some older guides recommend Hermes's built-in opencode-free provider. As of September 2026 it answers requests from outside the OpenCode app with an error, so it no longer works as a free model for Hermes.
The free setups that actually work
| Setup | Always on? | Setup effort | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old laptop + OpenRouter free | If you keep it awake | An hour | Power cuts, sleep, rate limits |
| Desktop + Ollama | If you keep it on | An hour or two | Weaker tool use from small models |
| Oracle Always Free + OpenRouter free | Yes | 1–2 hours | Instance reclaimed or disabled |
| Google e2-micro + OpenRouter free | Yes | 1–2 hours | Only 1 GB of memory |
When free stops being worth it
Free works well for learning and for a bot you poke at now and then. It gets expensive in time when you start relying on the bot: the free model hits a rate limit halfway through a scheduled job, the VM gets reclaimed, the laptop installs an update overnight.
If you get to that point, the cheapest step up is small. Managed Hermes on OpenClaw Launch is $3 for the first month for new customers and $6 after, includes $1 a month of model credit, and we handle updates, restarts and daily backups. If you want to compare every paid option side by side first, read Hermes Agent pricing: every option compared.
Questions people ask
Is Hermes Agent completely free?
The software is. A free machine and a free model make the whole thing free, with the trade-offs above. Full answer in Is Hermes Agent free?
Can I run Hermes on a Raspberry Pi?
Yes. Hermes supports arm64 Linux. A Pi 4 or 5 with 2 GB or more is fine for chat-only use with a cloud model. Local models on a Pi are slow enough that most people pair it with a cloud model.
Is the Oracle free tier still good for Hermes?
The new 2 OCPU / 12 GB limit is enough, but reports of disabled instances mean you should keep backups and not treat it as permanent.
Checked 26 September 2026. Free tiers change often, so check each provider's page before you build on one.