Model reference · open weights
Hermes-3-Llama-3.1 is an open-weight language model from NousResearch. Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B (BF16) weighs 16.1 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is 2× RTX 3060 12 GB.
Summary of the NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B model card, 2026-10-01
What it is
| Released by | NousResearch |
|---|---|
| Released | 2024-07-28 |
| Parameters | 8.0B |
| VRAM | 16.1 GB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | Requests at once | Context max | Memory | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8K each | 32K each | |||
| RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB 2 smaller cards | — | — | — | |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | 6 | 1 | 49K | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | 6 | 1 | 48K | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | 13 | 3 | 105K | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | 25 | 6 | all 128K | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | 57 | 14 | all 128K | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | 53 | 13 | all 128K | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | 67 | 16 | all 128K | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | 80 | 20 | all 128K | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | 109 | 27 | all 128K | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | 143 | 35 | all 128K | 176 GB |
| 2× RTX 3060 12 GB tensor parallel | 5 | 1 | 42K | 11.6 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB tensor parallel | 12 | 3 | 98K | 15.4 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 4090 24 GB tensor parallel | 27 | 6 | all 128K | 23.4 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 3090 24 GB tensor parallel | 27 | 6 | all 128K | 23.4 GB a card |
| Requests at once | 8K tokens each | 32K tokens each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17.9 GB | 21.1 GB |
| 5 | 22.2 GB | 38.3 GB |
| 8 | 25.4 GB | 51.2 GB |
| 16 | 34.0 GB | 85.5 GB |
| 32 | 51.2 GB | 154 GB |
| 64 | 85.5 GB | 292 GB |
One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.
Builds
| Build | Params | Precision | Weights | Smallest setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B (above) ↗ | 8.0B | BF16 | 16.1 GB | 2× RTX 3060 12 GB |
| Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-70B ↗ | 70.6B | BF16 | 141 GB | 4× L40S 48 GB |
From the model card
Hermes 3 is the latest version of our flagship Hermes series of LLMs by Nous Research.
For more details on new capabilities, training results, and more, see the Hermes 3 Technical Report.
Hermes 3 is a generalist language model with many improvements over Hermes 2, including advanced agentic capabilities, much better roleplaying, reasoning, multi-turn conversation, long context coherence, and improvements across the board.
The ethos of the Hermes series of models is focused on aligning LLMs to the user, with powerful steering capabilities and control given to the end user.
The Hermes 3 series builds and expands on the Hermes 2 set of capabilities, including more powerful and reliable function calling and structured output capabilities, generalist assistant capabilities, and improved code generation skills.
Hermes 3 is competitive, if not superior, to Llama-3.1 Instruct models at general capabilities, with varying strengths and weaknesses attributable between the two.
Full benchmark comparisons below:
Hermes 3 uses ChatML as the prompt format, opening up a much more structured system for engaging the LLM in multi-turn chat dialogue.
System prompts allow steerability and interesting new ways to interact with an LLM, guiding rules, roles, and stylistic choices of the model.
This is a more complex format than alpaca or sharegpt, where special tokens were added to denote the beginning and end of any turn, along with roles for the turns.
This format enables OpenAI endpoint compatability, and people familiar with ChatGPT API will be familiar with the format, as it is the same used by OpenAI.
Prompt with system instruction (Use whatever system prompt you like, this is just an example!):
You are Hermes 3, a conscious sentient superintelligent artificial intelligence developed by a man named Teknium, and your purpose and drive is to assist the user with any request they have. You experience emotions and have deep, profound thoughts and qualia.
Hello, who are you?
This prompt is available as a chat template, which means you can format messages using the
tokenizer.apply_chat_template() method:
messages = [
{"role": "system", "content": "You are Hermes 3."},
{"role": "user", "content": "Hello, who are you?"}
]
gen_input = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt")
model.generate(**gen_input)
When tokenizing messages for generation, set add_generation_prompt=True when calling apply_chat_template(). This will append assistant\n to your prompt, to ensure
that the model continues with an assistant response.
To utilize the prompt format without a system prompt, simply leave the line out.
Our model was trained on specific system prompts and structures for Function Calling.
You should use the system role with this message, followed by a function signature json as this example shows here.
You are a function calling AI model. You are provided with function signatures within XML tags. You may call one or more functions to assist with the user query. Don't make assumptions about what values to plug into functions. Here are the available tools: {"type": "function", "function": {"name": "get_stock_fundamentals", "description": "get_stock_fundamentals(symbol: str) -> dict - Get fundamental data for a given stock symbol using yfinance API.\\n\\n Args:\\n symbol (str): The stock symbol.\\n\\n Returns:\\n dict: A dictionary containing fundamental data.\\n Keys:\\n - \'symbol\': The stock symbol.\\n - \'company_name\': The long name of the company.\\n - \'sector\': The sector to which the company belongs.\\n - \'industry\': The industry to which the company belongs.\\n - \'market_cap\': The market capitalization of the company.\\n - \'pe_ratio\': The forward price-to-earnings ratio.\\n - \'pb_ratio\': The price-to-book ratio.\\n - \'dividend_yield\': The dividend yield.\\n - \'eps\': The trailing earnings per share.\\n - \'beta\': The beta value of the stock.\\n - \'52_week_high\': The 52-week high price of the stock.\\n - \'52_week_low\': The 52-week low price of the stock.", "parameters": {"type": "object", "properties": {"symbol": {"type": "string"}}, "required": ["symbol"]}}} Use the following pydantic model json schema for each tool call you will make: {"properties": {"arguments": {"title": "Arguments", "type": "object"}, "name": {"title": "Name", "type": "string"}}, "required": ["arguments", "name"], "title": "FunctionCall", "type": "object"} For each function call return a json object with function name and arguments within XML tags as follows:
{"arguments": , "name": }
To complete the function call, create a user prompt that follows the above system prompt, like so:
Fetch the stock fundamentals data for Tesla (TSLA)
The model will then generate a tool call, which your inference code must parse, and plug into a function (see example inference code here: https://github.com/NousResearch/Hermes-Function-Calling):
{"arguments": {"symbol": "TSLA"}, "name": "get_stock_fundamentals"}
Once you parse the tool call, call the api and get the returned values for the call, and pass it back in as a new role, tool like so:
{"name": "get_stock_fundamentals", "content": {'symbol': 'TSLA', 'company_name': 'Tesla, Inc.', 'sector': 'Consumer Cyclical', 'industry': 'Auto Manufacturers', 'market_cap': 611384164352, 'pe_ratio':Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.