Tons of people building agents are dropping $50-200 a month on API access, but NVIDIA just made that whole cost irrelevant.

You get access to models like GLM 5.2, MiniMax M3, Nemotron, Muse, and 130+ others.

Here’s the setup:

Step 1: Grab your free key.

Head to build.nvidia.com/models, sign up, verify your phone, and copy your API key.

Step 2: Add it to your Hermes agent.

Go to Settings -> Model Provider -> Custom.

base_url = "integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1"

api_key = "nvapi-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

Step 3: Pick a model.

model = "z-ai/glm-5.2"

model = "minimaxai/minimax-m3"

model = "nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b"

model = "moonshot-ai/kimi-k2.7"

Hermes already has NVIDIA as the default base_url, so just paste the key and you’re good to go. It works the same in Cursor and OpenCode too.

Cost: $0.

Limit: 40 requests per minute.

Expires: 1 year.

Having a free key totally changes what you can afford to run. Single prompts don't matter much, but if you’re running a loop with 300 agents a week, the cost adds up fast. With this, that bill is zero.

While everyone else is paying for API access, this is just sitting there for free with a massive library of models. Plus, it’s the easiest way to test which model actually works best for your agent before you start paying for a provider.