Model reference · open weights

Hermes-3-Llama-3.1

LLMs NousResearch Text gen 2 builds Open, with conditions 412k dl/mo

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.

  • Hermes-3-Llama-3.1 is an 8.0B parameter text-generation model developed by NousResearch.
  • It is designed for generalist assistant tasks, including advanced agentic capabilities, function calling, and structured output generation.
  • The model supports a context length of 131,072 tokens, operates in English, and is released under the llama3 license.

Summary of the NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byNousResearch
Released2024-07-28
Parameters8.0B
VRAM16.1 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B (BF16)

16.1 GBweights, file size
131 MBcache per 1K tokens
745 MBruntime overhead, at least
131,072 tokenscontext max
CardRequests at onceContext maxMemory
8K each32K each
RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
2 smaller cards
———
RTX 3090 24 GB6149K23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GB6148K23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GB133105K31.0 GB
L40S 48 GB256all 128K44.0 GB
A100 80 GB5714all 128K78.2 GB
H100 80 GB5313all 128K78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB6716all 128K93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified8020all 128K107 GB
H200 141 GB10927all 128K138 GB
B200 180 GB14335all 128K176 GB
2× RTX 3060 12 GB
tensor parallel
5142K11.6 GB a card
2× RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
tensor parallel
12398K15.4 GB a card
2× RTX 4090 24 GB
tensor parallel
276all 128K23.4 GB a card
2× RTX 3090 24 GB
tensor parallel
276all 128K23.4 GB a card
Memory needed at each load
Requests at once8K tokens each32K tokens each
117.9 GB21.1 GB
522.2 GB38.3 GB
825.4 GB51.2 GB
1634.0 GB85.5 GB
3251.2 GB154 GB
6485.5 GB292 GB

One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B (above) ↗ 8.0BBF16 16.1 GB2× RTX 3060 12 GB
Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-70B ↗ 70.6BBF16 141 GB4× L40S 48 GB

From the model card

What NousResearch says about Hermes-3-Llama-3.1

Read the model card

Model Description

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.

Benchmarks

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:

Prompt Format

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.

Prompt Format for Function Calling

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.

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