Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)
In this head-to-head showdown, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct is more budget-friendly at $1/1M per 1M output tokens. Review the complete breakdown below to determine which model best fits your performance and budget requirements.
Anthropic workhorse. Official $2/$10 per 1M tokens made permanent on Aug 10 2026.
Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (nousresearch/hermes-3-llama-3.1-405b). Preview until a second source matches.
Speed, cost, and intelligence tradeoffs across the Anthropic lineup
Single model data
No latency data
$1 / 1M output
Relative percentile scores computed across all active models in the benchmark catalog.
Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.
Category wins across reasoning intelligence, generation speed, and token cost.
Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy
Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness
Cost per million tokens and max context window length
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct | Advantage Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preference Elo | — | — | |
| Coding Elo | — | — | |
| LiveBench | — | — | |
| SWE-bench | — | — | |
| GPQA Diamond | — | — | |
| Time to first token | — | — | |
| Output speed | 118 tok/s | — | — |
| Input price | Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct (+$1/1M) | ||
| Output price | Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct (+$9/1M) | ||
| Context window | Claude Sonnet 5 (+869k) |
Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).
Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct is estimated to save $170.00/month ($2,040/year).
Need SWE-bench on both sides.
Lower output list price ($1/1M).
Need TTFT on both sides.
Larger window (1M).
Claude Sonnet 5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.
| Target Workload | Recommended Pick | Evaluation Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Repo / coding agents | insufficient data | Need SWE-bench on both sides. |
| High-volume chat | Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct | Lower output list price ($1/1M). |
| Voice / low-latency UI | insufficient data | Need TTFT on both sides. |
| Long-document RAG | Claude Sonnet 5 | Larger window (1M). |
| Screenshots / vision | Claude Sonnet 5 | Claude Sonnet 5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog. |
Usually Sonnet 5 vs Opus 5. Coding delta versus output $/1M. The workhorse question.
Aug 10 2026 made the $2/$10 list permanent. Sonnet is the default Claude unless the repo is actually on fire.
Most of Opus 4.5 coding at a mid-tier price. Sonnet 5 replaced it as the buy; 4.5 remains a compare baseline.
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The real PNG is generated at /compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-hermes-3-llama-3-1-405b/opengraph-image for crawlers.
Verified head-to-head card
