# Nous Portal Nous Portal is [[Nous Research]]'s developer / API gateway for the [[Hermes]] model line. It is the equivalent of the OpenAI Platform or Anthropic Console; the place developers go to provision API keys, monitor usage, and call Hermes models programmatically. It is the third surface in Nous Research's three-product map alongside [[Nous Chat]] (consumer UI) and [[Hermes Agent]] (agent harness, which can use Portal as one of its model providers). ## What it provides - API keys scoped to the developer's Nous account. - Endpoints for inference against current Hermes variants. - Usage metering, billing, and rate limit visibility. - The first-party route into Hermes models without going through aggregators (OpenRouter, Hugging Face Inference, etc.). ## Why first-party access matters Aggregator routes (OpenRouter especially) work fine for casual use, but each adds: - **Latency overhead** from the extra hop. - **Privacy ambiguity**; data passes through a third party with its own retention policy. - **Feature lag**; new Hermes capabilities ship on Portal first, aggregators follow later. For anything production-shaped, first-party Portal access usually wins on all three dimensions. For experimentation, OpenRouter is often more convenient. ## Where it fits in the stack [[Hermes Agent]] lists Nous Portal as one of its first-class model providers; running Hermes Agent with a Nous Portal key is the most direct configuration. The same key works regardless of whether the model is being driven from the agent, a custom script, or an off-the-shelf MCP client. ## References - Site: https://portal.nousresearch.com/ - Nous Research: https://nousresearch.com/ ## Related - [[Nous Research]] - [[Hermes]] - [[Hermes Agent]] - [[Nous Chat]] - [[OpenRouter]] - [[HuggingFace]]