Compare / Seed-OSS 36B Instruct vs Hermes 4.3 36B
Seed-OSS 36B Instruct vs Hermes 4.3 36B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Seed-OSS 36B Instruct scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.3 vs 51.4. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Seed-OSS 36B Instruct wins 4 and Hermes 4.3 36B wins 1. Both need about 25.3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Seed-OSS 36B Instruct if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you need math and reasoning
- you need precise instruction following
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Pick Hermes 4.3 36B if…
No clear advantage in the data we have.
Specifications
| Seed-OSS 36B Instruct | Hermes 4.3 36B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 60.3 (likely 57–64) | 51.4 (likely 47–56) |
| Lab | ByteDance Seed · China | Nous Research (Hermes) · United States |
| Released | 2025-08-20 | 2025-11-17 |
| Parameters | 36.2B (dense) | 36.2B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~25.3 GB | ~25.3 GB |
| Context window | 512K tokens | 512K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 40.7K | 2.2K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Seed-OSS 36B Instruct | Hermes 4.3 36B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 82.7 | 80.7 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 71.4 | 65.5 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.1 | ≈ 7 |
| AIME Math | 84.7 | 69.3 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 67.4 | ≈ 59 |
| SWE-bench Verified Coding | 56.0 | ≈ 33 |
| MMLU Knowledge | 87.4 | 87.7 |
| Multilingual MMLU Multilingual | 78.4 | — |
| IFEval Instruction following | 85.8 | 77.9 |
| MATH-500 Math | — | 93.8 |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Seed-OSS 36B Instruct or Hermes 4.3 36B?
Seed-OSS 36B Instruct scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.3 vs 51.4. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Seed-OSS 36B Instruct wins 4 and Hermes 4.3 36B wins 1.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 25.3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Both have a 512K-token context window.
Can I use Seed-OSS 36B Instruct and Hermes 4.3 36B commercially?
Both are released under the Apache-2.0 license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.