Hermes Agent on a VPS: official requirements and monthly cost
Short answer (checked 4 Oct 2026): the Hermes Agent docs list software requirements (Linux, macOS on Apple Silicon, WSL2 or Windows; Python 3.14 through the installer; a Docker image) and give no minimum RAM or disk. For price only: DigitalOcean's 1 GiB plan is $6 a month and Hostinger KVM 1 (4 GB) is $6.49 a month, renewing at $11.99. Sources: Hermes installation docs, DigitalOcean, Hostinger.
Hermes Agent is an open-source agent from Nous Research. This page answers the questions people type into search about it, using only the project's own pages and vendor price pages, all checked on 4 Oct 2026. We did not run Hermes Agent and have no search-volume data.
What the official docs require
- Install on Linux, macOS (Apple Silicon only) or WSL2 with the install script; Windows has a native script; there is a Docker image (installation docs).
- Current installs run on Python 3.14, which the installer provides. A source install needs Git, curl, tar and SHA-256 tools.
- For a Linux user service that keeps running after logout, the docs tell an administrator to enable lingering.
- Project: github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent, MIT license. Stars, releases and commit dates change often, and the data our tools returned was a cached copy of unknown age, so we do not print them. Open the repository for current numbers.
How much RAM does Hermes Agent use?
We could not find a RAM or disk minimum on the installation page, and we did not measure it. So we cannot give you a number, and we do not name a required plan. A VPS is a supported kind of machine (Linux is listed). Start on a small monthly plan, watch memory with free -h, and resize if it runs out. For a rough comparison, OpenClaw's own guide uses 1 GB with swap, but that is a different project.
Cheapest VPS for Hermes Agent
Because no minimum is published, "cheapest that works" is not something we can state. The cheapest plans we checked on 4 Oct 2026: DigitalOcean Basic $6.00/mo (1 vCPU, 1 GiB, 25 GiB SSD) and Hostinger KVM 1 at $6.49/mo shown (1 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe), with a stated renewal of $11.99/mo (hostinger.com/vps-hosting). Hostinger's page text does not give the billing term of the promotional price.
Model API cost (separate from the VPS)
If the agent calls a hosted model, the model provider bills you per token. Anthropic's pricing page (platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing, checked 4 Oct 2026) lists, per million tokens (MTok), input and output prices of: Claude Haiku 4.5 $1 and $5, Claude Sonnet 5.5 $2 and $10, Claude Opus 5.5 $4 and $20. Other providers have their own prices; we did not check them for this page, so they are not shown.
Your real usage depends on what the agent does, and we did not measure any agent. To show the arithmetic, assume an illustration of 5 million input tokens and 1 million output tokens in a month. That is not a typical or measured figure. Monthly API cost = 5 x input price + 1 x output price: Haiku 4.5 = 5 x $1 + 1 x $5 = $10; Sonnet 5.5 = 5 x $2 + 1 x $10 = $20; Opus 5.5 = 5 x $4 + 1 x $20 = $40. Prompt caching and other discounts are ignored.
| VPS (DigitalOcean Basic, $/mo) | VPS + Haiku 4.5 | VPS + Sonnet 5.5 | VPS + Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU, 1 GiB: $6 | $16 | $26 | $46 |
| 1 vCPU, 2 GiB: $12 | $22 | $32 | $52 |
| 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB: $24 | $34 | $44 | $64 |
VPS prices: digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets, checked 4 Oct 2026. Multiply any total by 12 for a year; tax and backups are not included.
The VPS and the model API are billed by different companies and do not depend on each other, so you can change either one.
More VPS plans with specs and per-year prices are on the VPS specs and cost page. How we check prices: editorial policy.