# Nous Research

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/nous-research/  
**Website:** https://nousresearch.com  
**APIs profiled:** 2

Nous Research is an AI research and infrastructure company ("The AI Accelerator Company") known for the open-weight Hermes family of language models (including Hermes 4) and for Nous Portal, an OpenAI-compatible inference API served at inference-api.nousresearch.com. The Portal aggregates Nous's own Hermes models alongside a broad catalog of open and frontier third-party models (OpenRouter- style routing, 280+ models) behind a single chat-completions endpoint. Distinctively, the inference API supports the x402 HTTP payment protocol, returning HTTP 402 with a Solana USDC micropayment envelope so agents can pay per request without a pre-provisioned account. Beyond inference, Nous ships the Hermes Agent framework, Atropos RL environments, and Psyche/DisTrO for distributed model training over the internet. Backed by Paradigm.

## Kin Score — 25.0 / 100 (emerging)

Scored 2026-08-17 under rubric 0.11.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 25.0).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 75.9 |
| Contract Quality | 14.6 |
| Governance | 11.5 |
| Operational Transparency | 5.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 45.1 |
| Commercial Clarity | 13.2 |

## Agent readiness — 38.5 (agent-ready)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| MCP Server | derived |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | verified |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | no |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | derived |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Self-serve signup — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: unknown, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (2)

- **Nous Research Chat API** — OpenAI-compatible chat completions.
- **Nous Research Models API** — Model discovery and catalog.

## MCP servers (1)

- **nous-research-mcp.yml**

## Agentic access (1)

- **Nous Research Agentic Access** — 2 operations · 1 acting

## Security (2)

- **Nous Research Authentication** — http · 1 scheme
- **Nous Research Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

## Tags

Company, Ai, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, Inference, Agents, Open Weights, x402

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/nous-research/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.