Nous: Hermes 4 405B vs Sakana: Fugu Max: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Nous: Hermes 4 405B (nousresearch/hermes-4-405b) vs Sakana: Fugu Max (sakana/fugu-max). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
Nous: Hermes 4 405B (nousresearch/hermes-4-405b) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Nous: Hermes 4 405B: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.5/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
Sakana: Fugu Max (sakana/fugu-max) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Sakana: Fugu Max: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $1/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Nous: Hermes 4 405B (API ID: nousresearch/hermes-4-405b) vs Sakana: Fugu Max (API ID: sakana/fugu-max), Nous: Hermes 4 405B offers lower standard input pricing at $1/1M tokens ($3/1M output), while Nous: Hermes 4 405B leads in cached prefix economics at $0.5/1M tokens (50% discount). Nous: Hermes 4 405B achieves a 0ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (280ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Nous: Hermes 4 405B | Sakana: Fugu Max | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | nousresearch/hermes-4-405b | sakana/fugu-max | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $1 / $3 | $2 / $6 | Nous: Hermes 4 405B |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.5/1M (50% Off) | $1/1M (50% Off) | Nous: Hermes 4 405B |
| Context Window / Max Output | 128K In / 115K Out | 977K In / 125K Out | Sakana: Fugu Max |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | Nous: Hermes 4 405B (-0ms) |
Hermes 4 is a large-scale reasoning model built on Meta-Llama-3.1-405B and released by Nous Research. It introduces a hybrid reasoning mode, where the model can choose to deliberat
Fugu Max is the cost-performance model in Sakana AI's Fugu family. Rather than a single monolithic model, Fugu is a learned multi-agent orchestration system: a language model train
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
🛰️Switch from Nous: Hermes 4 405B to Sakana: Fugu Max
Fugu Max is the cost-performance model in Sakana AI's Fugu family. Rather than a single monolithic model, Fugu is a learned multi-agent orchestration system: a language model train Verified P90 latency of 280ms.