Comparison · June 2026
Rills vs Hermes
How Hermes and Rills differ on AI oversight, pricing, and mobile approvals.
Hermes is a powerful open-source agent that lives on your server, builds its own skills, and acts on its own, so a wrong call lands before you see it and its learning only makes it more autonomous. Rills keeps the leverage of an agent but on a leash: every consequential action waits for one swipe, and the logic around it never draws a credit.
- Hermes acts autonomously and learns to do more; Rills makes the agent ask first
- Hermes runs on your server and your model bill; Rills is managed, logic free
- Switch if non-deterministic, self-hosted autonomy is a risk you can't carry
Pick Rills if you want an AI agent that proposes and waits, with confidence scoring, predictable action pricing, and a mobile approval queue, fully managed.
Pick Hermes if you want a powerful, self-hosted, open-source agent with strong memory, skill, and sandboxing primitives and can absorb non-deterministic output and your own model bill.
Queue 3
Run a learned deploy skill
Skill: auto-generated from a past session
Executes shell + browser steps in a sandbox on your server
Non-deterministic: a re-run took a different path last time
0 approved0 rejected
Why operators choose Rills over Hermes
- Autonomous means you find out after. A Hermes agent acts on its own across the channels it runs on; by the time the output is wrong, it's already sent. Rills makes every consequential action wait for one swipe.
- Non-deterministic output is a liability on real tasks. The same goal can produce a different sequence of actions each run, and Hermes can spin up isolated subagents that each act unsupervised; Rills shows you exactly what it intends before it fires.
- Its learning makes it bolder, not safer. Hermes's persistent memory and auto-generated skills make it act more on its own. Rills's confidence scoring learns from your approvals to stop asking about the safe calls, shrinking the queue instead.
- No server to run, no model bill to babysit. Hermes is yours to self-host, sandbox, and secure on your own LLM spend; Rills is managed, multi-tenant, and team-ready, and runs logic free.
Full comparison
Pricing model
- Rills
- Base subscription from $29/month plus included workflow & AI credits; logic & approvals free
- Hermes
- Free and open source (MIT) — no license fee and no cloud tier; you self-host it on your own server, so the practical cost is the LLM usage behind every step plus the machine it runs on
Free / entry
- Rills
- Free trial; paid plans from Hobby tier (see rills.ai/pricing for tiers and included credits)
- Hermes
- Free and open source; runs on your own server with local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, or Modal sandboxing. There's no hosted plan to buy — your cost is the models it reasons with plus your own infrastructure
AI capabilities
- Rills
- Native AI agents with confidence scoring that learns from approvals
- Hermes
- Fully autonomous agent with persistent memory and auto-generated skills — it learns your projects and gets more capable the longer it runs, then acts on its own. Output is non-deterministic, so the same goal can produce a different sequence of actions each run
Human oversight
- Rills
- Built-in mobile approval queue; $0 while paused for review
- Hermes
- Chat-based oversight across the channels it runs on; the agent acts and reports back. No confidence-scored approval step before consequential actions fire, and its learning makes it act more autonomously rather than ask you less
Integrations
- Rills
- Growing catalog (focused on common business tools)
- Hermes
- Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, TTS, and isolated subagents, reachable from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email, and CLI — capability is the agent's own reach, not a supervised catalog
Mobile experience
- Rills
- Approval queue designed for mobile review
- Hermes
- Drive it from chat apps you already use (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal) on your phone; no purpose-built mobile approval queue
Best for
- Rills
- Teams that want AI to propose actions but humans to stay in the loop
- Hermes
- Technical operators who want a powerful, self-hosted autonomous agent with strong memory, skill, and sandboxing primitives, and can absorb non-deterministic output, the DevOps, and their own model bill
| Compare | RillsAI automation with human oversight | HermesThe open-source autonomous agent that lives on your server and learns |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Base subscription from $29/month plus included workflow & AI credits; logic & approvals free | Free and open source (MIT) — no license fee and no cloud tier; you self-host it on your own server, so the practical cost is the LLM usage behind every step plus the machine it runs on |
| Free / entry | Free trial; paid plans from Hobby tier (see rills.ai/pricing for tiers and included credits) | Free and open source; runs on your own server with local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, or Modal sandboxing. There's no hosted plan to buy — your cost is the models it reasons with plus your own infrastructure |
| AI capabilities | Native AI agents with confidence scoring that learns from approvals | Fully autonomous agent with persistent memory and auto-generated skills — it learns your projects and gets more capable the longer it runs, then acts on its own. Output is non-deterministic, so the same goal can produce a different sequence of actions each run |
| Human oversight | Built-in mobile approval queue; $0 while paused for review | Chat-based oversight across the channels it runs on; the agent acts and reports back. No confidence-scored approval step before consequential actions fire, and its learning makes it act more autonomously rather than ask you less |
| Integrations | Growing catalog (focused on common business tools) | Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, TTS, and isolated subagents, reachable from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email, and CLI — capability is the agent's own reach, not a supervised catalog |
| Mobile experience | Approval queue designed for mobile review | Drive it from chat apps you already use (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal) on your phone; no purpose-built mobile approval queue |
| Best for | Teams that want AI to propose actions but humans to stay in the loop | Technical operators who want a powerful, self-hosted autonomous agent with strong memory, skill, and sandboxing primitives, and can absorb non-deterministic output, the DevOps, and their own model bill |
When to choose Rills
- You want AI agents with confidence scoring that learns from your approvals over time
- You want a purpose-built mobile approval queue and $0 cost while workflows wait
- You prefer predictable action credit pricing over an open-ended, per-step model bill
- You want managed, team-ready automation rather than a server you host and secure yourself
When to choose Hermes
- You want a powerful, fully autonomous agent with broad system access (browsing, shell, subagents) rather than gated business workflows
- You prefer self-hosting under an open-source (MIT) license with complete data control and are comfortable with the DevOps and sandboxing
- You want the agent to build and reuse its own skills and run more on its own over time
- You want to drive it from chat apps you already use (Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp) rather than a dedicated approval queue
Pricing comparison
Rills
Base subscription from $29/month plus included workflow & AI credits; logic & approvals free
- Hobby $29/month: 10,000 workflow credits & 1,000 AI credits/mo (included)
- Professional $99/month: 50,000 workflow & 5,000 AI credits/mo
- Business $349/month: 200,000 workflow & 20,000 AI credits/mo
- Human approvals and workflow logic never consume credits
- $0 while workflows are paused awaiting approval
- Enterprise: custom pricing and credit pools (see /pricing)
Hermes
Free and open source (MIT) — no license fee and no cloud tier; you self-host it on your own server, so the practical cost is the LLM usage behind every step plus the machine it runs on
- Free and open source (MIT) from Nous Research — no license fee, no cloud tier
- Self-hosted: you run it on your own server (local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, or Modal)
- Practical cost is the LLM usage behind every step plus the machine it runs on
- No bundled credits and no predictable per-action price; spend tracks token chatter
Hermes is free to install, but every step runs an LLM on your own API key, so a chatty agent dispatching subagents can quietly run up a model bill, on top of the server you host it on. Rills runs logic for free and meters only high-value actions, so your cost tracks outcomes rather than token chatter, with nothing to self-host.
Calculate your own numbers — compare plans at your volume →
Sources, verified June 2026: Rills pricing · Hermes pricing
Rills puts a human between the agent and the irreversible action. Every consequential step waits for one swipe, basic logic runs free instead of on a per-step model bill, and confidence scoring learns which calls are safe to stop asking about.
Frequently asked questions
Is Rills a good Hermes alternative?
If Hermes's full autonomy made you nervous, Rills is the supervised counterpart. The agent proposes; you approve consequential actions from your phone with one swipe. You keep the leverage of an autonomous agent without it acting on its own before you've seen what it intends to do, and there's no server to host.
How is Hermes different from a simpler agent like OpenClaw?
Hermes, from Nous Research, leans on stronger primitives: persistent memory, auto-generated skills it reuses, and five sandboxing backends (local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal). That makes it more capable and more autonomous. Rills's position is the same against both — keep the leverage, but make consequential actions wait for a human swipe.
Why choose supervised AI over a fully autonomous agent?
Autonomous agents are non-deterministic: the same goal can produce a different sequence of actions, and a wrong call lands before you notice. Hermes's learning makes it act more on its own, not ask you less. For anything irreversible, a human approval is cheap insurance, and Rills makes that approval fast.
Can I self-host Rills like Hermes?
No. Hermes is open source (MIT) and runs on your own server; Rills is a managed, multi-tenant cloud product with no self-hosted edition. If running everything on your own infrastructure under an open-source license is a hard requirement, Hermes fits that; if you want managed, team-ready, supervised automation, Rills does.
Is Rills cheaper than running Hermes?
Hermes has no license fee, but you pay for every LLM call it makes on your own provider account, plus the server you host it on, with no bundled credits and no predictable per-action price. Rills runs logic for free, includes credits in the base plan, and meters only high-value actions, so spend is predictable. See rills.ai/pricing.
Approve from your phone. Pause without paying.
14-day trial, no card. Plug in one workflow, watch it ask before it acts.
No credit card to start. Cancel anytime, export your data, no lock-in.
Compare Rills with other tools
Automation products change tiers often. Confirm current limits and prices on each vendor's site before you buy.
Last updated: June 2026
Hermes, Nous Research are trademarks of their respective owners. Rills is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these companies. Product information was accurate as of the date shown and may have changed. Visit each product's website for current pricing and features.