Which Model Should
Power Your AI Agent?
We ran 19 LLMs through the Hermes Harness — n8n Lab's agent testing framework. Here's the data, our verdicts, and the surprising winner for everyday agent work.
Our Top Picks by Agent Type
Different agents need different strengths. Click any card to see the full analysis for that agent type.
Coding Agent
Terminal-based coding, multi-file refactors, debugging, PR review, code generation.
GPT-5.6 Sol leads on GPQA — the strongest reasoning model available. For agents doing complex analysis, math, and logic, this is #1. Coding is neck-and-neck with Opus 4.7.
Reasoning Agent
Complex logic, math, analysis, research synthesis, planning, strategy.
GPT-5.6 Sol leads on GPQA — the strongest reasoning model available. For agents doing complex analysis, math, and logic, this is #1. Coding is neck-and-neck with Opus 4.7.
General Agent
All-purpose agent doing mixed tasks — some code, some reasoning, some communication.
The price-to-performance KING. Matches models 5-10x its price on coding and reasoning. Our default recommendation for production agent workloads. The cached input price is so low it's practically free.
Budget Agent
High-volume, cost-sensitive agent loops. Runs 24/7, handles thousands of requests.
The ultimate budget agent. At $0.09/M input, you can run it 24/7 without thinking about cost. Solid coding for the price, decent reasoning. Perfect for high-volume, cost-sensitive agent loops.
Multimodal Agent
Vision-enabled agents — screenshot analysis, UI testing, document/image processing.
The multimodal king. Unmatched vision + code + reasoning in one model. If your agent needs to SEE screenshots, diagrams, and code simultaneously, this is the one. Strongest coding agent in head-to-head arena play.
Sales/Comms Agent
Customer-facing agents — email, chat, sales outreach. Tone, personality, multilingual.
The gold standard for coding agents. When you NEED it to work — complex refactors, multi-file changes, debugging hell — Opus delivers. Expensive, but cheaper than developer hours spent debugging cheaper models.
Price Landscape
All 19 models ranked by input price. The gap between budget and frontier is over 100x.
The Hermes Harness Verdict
After testing every model in real agent scenarios, here's what we actually use in production.
Balanced performance, reasonable price, reliable agent behavior.
You can run it 24/7 without checking your bill. Perfect for high-volume loops.
When code quality matters more than cost per token.
For complex analysis, math, and logic-heavy agent tasks.
The takeaway: You don't need frontier models for everyday agent work. DeepSeek V4 Pro at $0.435/M delivers 85-90% of the performance at 5-10x lower cost. Reserve Opus/GPT-5.6 for the hardest problems, and let budget models handle the rest.
Full Model Comparison
Sort, filter, and compare every model. Click column headers to sort.
| Model | Tier | Input | Output | SWE-bench | GPQA | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MiniMax M2.7 MiniMax · 197K · 🔒 Closed | Best Value | $0.30 | $1.20 | 68.9% | 73.5% | 💻🧠💰 |
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Best Value | $0.43 | $0.87 | 65.8% | 72.1% | 💻💰🤖 |
Gemini 3.5 Flash Google · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $0.75 | $4.50 | 63% | 70.2% | 💻👁️🤖 |
Qwen3.7 Max Alibaba · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $1.25 | $3.75 | 71.5% | 78% | 🧠💻 |
Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $2.00 | $10 | 75% | 80.2% | 💻💬🤖 |
Grok 4.5 SpaceXAI · 500K · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $2.00 | $6.00 | 72.3% | 79.8% | 🧠💬 |
Gemini 3.1 Pro Google · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $2.00 | $12 | 77% | 83.5% | 💻👁️🤖 |
GPT-5.4 OpenAI · 1.1M · 🔒 Closed | Mid-Tier | $2.50 | $15 | 74.7% | 82.5% | 🧠🤖💻 |
GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI · 1.1M · 🔒 Closed | Premium | $2.50 | $15 | 81.5% | 87% | 🧠💻 |
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Premium | $3.00 | $15 | 73.5% | 78.6% | 💬 |
Kimi K3 Moonshot AI · 1.0M · 🔓 Open | Premium | $3.00 | $15 | 73.8% | 76.5% | 🤖 |
Claude Opus 4.7 Anthropic · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Premium | $5.00 | $25 | 82% | 85.5% | 💻💬 |
Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Frontier | $5.00 | $25 | 84.5% | 86.8% | 💻💬 |
GPT-5.6 Sol Pro OpenAI · 1.1M · 🔒 Closed | Frontier | $5.00 | $30 | 85% | 88.5% | 🧠 |
GPT-5.5 Pro OpenAI · 1.1M · 🔒 Closed | Frontier | $5.00 | $30 | 83.3% | 86.5% | 💻🧠 |
Claude Fable 5 Anthropic · 1.0M · 🔒 Closed | Frontier | $10 | $50 | 87.1% | 89% | 💻🧠 |
How We Test
The Hermes Harness methodology — not just benchmarks, real agent behavior.
Benchmark Data
SWE-bench Verified, Terminal-Bench 2.1, GPQA Diamond, MMLU-Pro, LiveCodeBench. Sourced from official vendor reports and independent leaderboards (llm-stats.com, pricepertoken.com).
Agent Scoring
Our 0-10 agent scores are based on n8n Lab's internal testing — running each model through Hermes Harness with standardized agent tasks: code refactoring, debugging, research synthesis, and sales communication.
Pricing Accuracy
All prices verified July 17, 2026 via pricepertoken.com and vendor API docs. Cache hit pricing shown where available. Prices are per 1M tokens, standard tier (non-batch).
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