# Kortix vs Hermes: an open-source agent or an open-source platform

> Kortix is open source and built for a whole company; Hermes is open source and built for one person. The choice turns on how many people steer the agent, how much you must control its tools, and whether its history has to survive a review.

URL: https://hermesalternative.com/kortix-vs-hermes

## Kortix and Hermes, feature by feature

The same open-source values, at two different scales.

| | Kortix (recommended) | Hermes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Open source | Open source. Read it, fork it, audit it. | Open source; your own model. |
| Designed for | Teams and companies. | One person. |
| Tenancy | Multi-tenant, with roles and groups. | Single operator. |
| Tool policy | Set each tool to Allow, Ask or Block. | Command approval and DM pairing. |
| Isolation | One isolated sandbox per session. | Docker, SSH, or Modal backend. |
| Where config lives | In a git repo you own. | On the machine you run it on. |
| Review and history | Work lands through a change request; every action is recorded. | Personal memory and skills. |
| Hosting | Kortix Cloud, your VPC, or on-prem. | A $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless. |

Hermes facts come from its own repository, checked October 2026; Kortix facts come from the Kortix docs and the Kortix repository.

## Session to reviewed change

`terminal`

```sh
kortix sessions new --prompt "Reproduce issue #142, fix it, and open a change request"
kortix cr ls
```

Source: https://github.com/kortix-ai/suna (README.md)

A session runs on its own sandbox and branch, and what it produces reaches main through review.

## Two open-source agents, two different jobs

Hermes and Kortix share the values that matter to a developer: both are open source, both let you bring your own model, and both run on hardware you choose. The difference is who they are built for. Hermes is the agent that grows with you, tuned for one person and a private, always-on companion. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, built so a whole team can run agents, govern what they touch, and keep the history.

## Where Hermes is the right answer

Hermes is a strong personal agent. [Hermes on GitHub](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent) describes a self-improving agent with a learning loop: it creates skills from experience, keeps its own memory, and searches past sessions for context. It reaches you across Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and the CLI, and it runs on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure. If one person wants an always-on agent on their own machine, Hermes is built for exactly that, and it does it without asking you to run a company platform.

## Where Kortix takes over

The moment more than one person steers the agent, Hermes's shape works against you. Kortix answers the questions a team has to ask. Who may reach which tool? Set each tool to Allow, Ask or Block, down to the arguments of each call, and an Ask holds the call until a person approves it. Where does the work run? One isolated sandbox per session, each on its own branch. What happened, and who signed off? Session work reaches `main` through a change request, and every action is recorded. Who is allowed in? Roles, groups, and an audit trail, with SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0.

## The line, stated plainly

Choose Hermes when the user is a person: a private agent on your own machine, in your own chat apps, improving its own skills. Choose Kortix when the user is a team or a company: shared projects with roles, scoped tools, isolation per session, and a reviewed history. They are two sizes of the same idea, an agent for one and a platform for many.

## A short decision path

If you are one person and want an agent on your own machine, use Hermes. If you are a team that wants to own and govern a fleet of agents, self-host Kortix or run it on the cloud, and keep every change reviewed. Kortix is the open-source platform for the team side.

## Kortix vs Hermes questions

What decides the choice between them.

### Is Kortix open source?

Yes. Kortix is open source: read it, fork it, audit it. It runs from one git repo you own.

### Is Hermes open source?

Yes. Hermes is open source, and it uses whatever model you point it at. It is built for one operator.

### Can a team share Hermes?

Hermes is built for one person. A team that needs roles, scoped tools, and isolation per session needs a platform built for it, and that is Kortix.

### What does Kortix add that Hermes does not?

Multi-tenant projects, per-resource permissions for people and agents, one isolated sandbox per session, and an audit trail, with work landing through a change request.

### Can we self-host either one?

Yes. Hermes runs on your own machine, a VPS, or a cluster. Kortix runs on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network; self-host is free.

### Could we use both?

Yes. A person can run Hermes on their own machine while the team runs Kortix; the two do not have to compete.

## Pick the size that fits: one agent, or a whole company.

Kortix is the open-source platform for the team side.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [Kortix on GitHub](https://github.com/kortix-ai/suna)

Open source · Any model, your keys · Self-host, VPC, or on-prem