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:
| Attribute | Hermes 4 405B | 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 |
| AI IQ | Unrated | IQ 98 #136 on AI IQ |
| Provider routes | 1 | 23 with failover |
| Privacy | Zero retention route | Confidential E2EE and zero retention route |
| Publisher | Nous Research | OpenAI |
| Modes | chat | chat |
| More detail |
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-azure.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-azure.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-azure.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
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.
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.
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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.