Hermes 4 405B vs gpt-oss-120b

Practical read: gpt-oss-120b costs under a tenth as much. One API key runs both.

No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.

Side by side:

Hermes 4 405B compared with OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b
Attribute	Hermes 4 405B `NousResearch/Hermes-4-405B`	gpt-oss-120b `openai/gpt-oss-120b`
Price, 1M in + out	$4.22 Nebius Token Factory, cheapest route	$0.21 Weights & Biases, cheapest route
Best for		Low cost
Input / output, 1M	$1.06 / $3.16	$0.032 / $0.18
Cached input	Not published	$0.015825/1M to $0.1055/1M
Context window	131K 131,072 tokens	131K 131,072 tokens
First token, p50	Measuring	0.66 s via Nebius Token Factory
AI IQ	Unrated	IQ 98 #136 on AI IQ
Provider routes	1	24 with failover
Privacy	Zero retention route	Confidential E2EE and zero retention route
Recent route uptime range	100.00%	100.00%
Publisher	Nous Research	OpenAI
Modes	chat	chat
More detail	Overview	Overview Pricing Providers

Price adds one million input and one million output tokens on the cheapest route. Prices and speed change: see the monthly reports and run a small eval before you choose a default.

Test both with your agent

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent.

Compare Hermes 4 405B and gpt-oss-120b in this project through TrustedRouter.

1. Read https://trustedrouter.com/docs/llms.txt
2. Point the OpenAI-compatible client at
   https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1 and read the key from
   TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY.
3. Run our eval prompts on NousResearch/Hermes-4-405B, then on openai/gpt-oss-120b.
4. Show me cost, latency and quality side by side before changing the default.

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY"],
)
for model in ("NousResearch/Hermes-4-405B", "openai/gpt-oss-120b"):
    response = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}],
    )
    print(model, response.choices[0].message.content)

for model in NousResearch/Hermes-4-405B openai/gpt-oss-120b; do
  curl https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1/chat/completions \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"model\": \"$model\", \"messages\": [{\"role\": \"user\", \"content\": \"What is the capital of France?\"}]}"
done

Your agent will need an API key.

Questions

Which should I use, Hermes 4 405B or OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b?

gpt-oss-120b has the lower published input-plus-output rate and more Credits provider routes. Their context windows are the same size. There is not enough recent probe data to compare speed.

Is Hermes 4 405B or OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b cheaper?

The current cheapest TrustedRouter route is $4.22/1M for Hermes 4 405B and $0.211/1M for OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b. The comparison uses current catalog prices and updates as provider pricing changes.

Is Hermes 4 405B or OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b faster?

Current measured p50 time to first token is not enough data for Hermes 4 405B and 658 ms for OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b. These are routed probe measurements, not vendor-advertised speeds, and update as new samples arrive.

Can I test Hermes 4 405B and OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b with the same API?

Yes. Use the same OpenAI-compatible TrustedRouter base URL and API key, then change only the model id between NousResearch/Hermes-4-405B and openai/gpt-oss-120b. This makes side-by-side evals possible without maintaining two provider integrations.

More comparisons

All comparisons

Try Hermes 4 405B and gpt-oss-120b with one key.

TrustedRouter is useful when you know the model you want, but still need provider rollover, budget limits, usage records, and a prompt path you can verify.

No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.