Nous Portal Subscription | Nous Research | Page 1

naive sigil May 21, 2026, 12:06 PM

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Hi All,

I’ve been using Hermes for ‘ages’ - a multiple OpenClaw agent survivor!

My agent has, since inception, been running on Kimi API directly - K2.5 then K2.6 now - very happy with the results.

I few weeks ago Nous announced a subscription, seems pretty clear, 4-5+ tools under one subscription billed on a per use basis, ace.

Nous also offers a single point API key to use any AI provider, also ace (Kimi K2.6 seems cheaper Input/Cache/Output than Kimi direct).

This, via a relationship with OpenRouter I think.

My question is, are these two ‘services’ one combined subscription for tools +AI API or are they separate, it doesn’t seem to be overly clear.

The reason I ask is that when you click on an AI model in Nous Portal, it pings you to OpenRouter to see the pricing.

Do I need a subscription with Nous (I’d love to support what they’re doing) AND an OpenRouter account - or by creating a Nous Portal subscription I can load it with credits to use for AI API too, with a single Key allowing Hermes tools and inference at the same time through the same subscription?

If Nous are getting a % of AI spend back from OpenRouter and it’s cheaper than Kimi direct I’d switch $3-400 monthly spend directly over to the Nous Subscription.

Thanks in advance,
Donny.

runic river May 21, 2026, 12:45 PM

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It's one subscription for both LLM and the tool gateway.

naive sigil May 21, 2026, 1:13 PM

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But the billing page says they’re for ‘Nous Chat’ (whatever that is) and not API access?

runic river May 21, 2026, 1:25 PM

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The Hermes Agent tool gateway uses your subscription credits

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Nous Chat is the web chat

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API credits are for using the Nous Research inference API outside of Hermes Agent
https://portal.nousresearch.com/api-docs

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The subscription is for Hermes Agent model access and tool gateway, and it will use your API credits after you've hit your subscription limit

#Nous Portal Subscription