Pricing comparator · 2 September 2026
OpenRouter is still the main BYO-key alternative: pay-per-token, prepaid credits, no Plus-style monthly bundle. Portal Plus is a subscription that throws in a 10% credit bonus and a Tool Gateway. If you only model the $2, you will make the wrong call.
Copied from portal.nousresearch.com on 2 Sep 2026. Paid tiers include monthly credits, hosted tool usage, and higher rate limits. 10% bonus credits on the paid plans.
| Plan | You pay | Credits you get | Rollover | Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plus | $20 / month | $22 | $10 cap (verified) | 10% |
| Super | $100 / month | $110 | Rollover caps exist on paid tiers; we only treat the Plus $10 cap as a hard cited figure here. | 10% |
| Ultra | $200 / month | $220 | Same caveat as Super. | 10% |
A referral does not rewrite list price. If you start a new personal Plus subscription through the link on this site, the referee gets $15 off the first paid month — not a permanent $5 plan, and not a $10 payout on a free signup. Self-referral is banned: Portal Terms §5.7.
OpenRouter remains pay-per-token. You prepay credits and burn them against whatever model you call. There is no Plus-style monthly credit bundle, and there is no Tool Gateway sitting on the invoice.
We could not verify a current OpenRouter platform fee from a static official page on 2 Sep 2026. Their FAQ renders the credit-purchase fee from a template (getTotalFeeString), so a scrape does not yield a trustworthy live percentage. Treat older blog posts (including OpenRouter’s own June 2025 fee post) as historical, not as today’s number. Qualitatively: you buy usage; they charge a fee on credit purchases rather than selling a $20 → $22 monthly pack.
Practical comparison without pretending we have their 2026 fee to two decimals:
From the official Hermes Portal docs (integrations/nous-portal): five backends, one OAuth. Without the gateway you are collecting vendor accounts.
| Tool | Partner behind Portal | What you avoid signing up for |
|---|---|---|
| Web search & extract | Firecrawl | A Firecrawl account and its rate-limit babysitting |
| Image generation | FAL | A FAL account (FLUX, GPT Image, Ideogram, etc.) |
| Text-to-speech | OpenAI TTS | A separate OpenAI key just for voice |
| Cloud browser | Browser Use | Browserbase (or similar) for browser_navigate / click / type / vision |
| Cloud terminal (optional) | Modal | A Modal account for sandboxed exec |
That’s the “without 5 extra accounts” argument, and it is the one we actually believe. $22 of credits for $20 is a rounding error next to the operational cost of five dashboards.
You can mix: keep a Browserbase key and still route search and images through Nous. hermes tools is per-tool, not all-or-nothing. Official walkthrough sits in those same docs.
You want Hermes useful on day one: a frontier model, web extract, a browser, maybe TTS, and you refuse to open five billing tabs. $20/mo, $22 credits, $10 Plus rollover cap. First paid month $15 off if you use a qualifying referral — then $20.
You already pay OpenRouter. Your tools are wired. You want pay-per-token with no monthly pack and no $10 rollover ceiling. Or you need routing extensions Portal does not promise. Hermes will take OpenRouter as a provider; Portal is not mandatory.
Related: runtime comparison (Hermes vs OpenClaw vs Cowork vs Cursor) · practical hermes setup --portal.
Only if you are starting a new personal Plus subscription. Referrer (Valet Ops) may get $10 in API credit when you subscribe — not when you create a free account.
Start Plus — $15 off first paid month Official Portal docsThis site uses a Nous Portal referral link. If you start a new personal Plus subscription through it, we may receive $10 in API credit. You get $15 off your first paid month. Unofficial, not affiliated with Nous Research.