Agent Zero vs Conductor

Agent Zero 60

Read with the self-hosted rule. No payment protocol in the source (0). Free under MIT with nothing to buy for the software, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. It starts with one Docker command and no account. Model usage is billed by whichever provider the owner configures, or costs nothing with a local model. The vendor's site also describes a beta LLM API whose daily quota depends on staking its A0T token. That is separate from the software and not scored.

Conductor 0

No new sign-ups since 4 November, free users can't upgrade, and no price is shown. No protocol, no published price, no open free tier, no onboarding (0).

Agent Zero 57

Read with the local-software lines, as software the owner runs. Installs from the agent0ai/agent-zero Docker image, an install script, or a desktop Launcher with builds for macOS, Linux and Windows on x86 and ARM64. The README says it runs wherever Docker runs. The image registry page was not read (17 of 20). The repository holds 245 files under tests/ on 4 November, and its only two workflows still publish Docker images and close inactive issues. The publish workflow runs no tests, so no public CI run shows them passing (5 of 25, a partial kept). 139 open issues and pull requests on 12 October 2026, per that check (GitHub's pages and API weren't read on 4 November). Open reports from September include a crash of run_ui after a failed memory consolidation (#1909), a browser worker that hangs the agent turn (#1923) and truncated backups (#1904), each with no reply or one, and a workflow closes anything inactive for 90 days (11 of 25). Release notes for v2.11, v2.12 and v2.13 carry a Breaking Changes section, but breaking changes ship in minor versions, so the numbering is not semver (9 of 15). v2.15, past 1.0 (15).

Conductor 25

Read as local software that is winding down. Installed from Conductor's own download, which stopped taking new users on 4 November 2026 (10). Closed source, so no public CI or issue tracker (0, 0). A dated changelog, newest 0.93.0 on 4 November (15). Version 0.93 (0). 10 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 25.

Agent Zero 75

v2.15 was tagged on 1 November 2026, 3 days before this check (30). Seven releases from 6 August, v2.9 on 12 August to v2.15, read from the clone's tags (20). Of the 40 newest open items read on 12 October, 16 are issues and 14 of those have no comment. Three security reports filed as issues were closed as completed, one in five days and two after three months. GitHub's issue pages weren't read on 4 November, so this is per the 12 October check (10 of 25). The Docker image, the desktop Launcher, the install scripts and the A0 CLI connector come from the same organisation, and the v2.14 notes point the README's Launcher links to v1.9 (10 of 15). A Docker publish workflow builds images from tags, and the v2.14 notes raise dependency security floors for aiohttp, anyio, urllib3, filelock, fsspec and multidict. No public test CI (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 75.

Conductor 58

0.93.0 on 4 November 2026 (30). Several dated releases in 90 days, per the changelog index (20). Discord, a subreddit and email for support (8). Closed app, no package or CI to read (0). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 58. The local app gets new models and critical fixes only until early 2027.

Agent Zero 64

MIT, copyright Agent Zero, s.r.o. (30). No privacy policy for the software was found. The site's cookie notice covers the website, and its terms (14 May 2026) cover the community platform. The docs say where data lives (chats, memory, secrets and settings under /a0/usr) and warn that model providers see what is sent to them only in general terms, with no retention statement (8 of 30). Release notes list breaking changes and removals with the release date, and one deprecated alias is named. No deprecation policy or notice period was found (8 of 20, a partial kept). No usage telemetry was found in the source. The update check is described on its settings page, which says it sends only a randomised, hashed install ID and the version number, and the same page turns it off. The ID is a hash of a random per-install token, a pseudonym under this run's reading, so the statement holds (20). 30 + 8 + 8 + 20 = 66.

Conductor 53

Closed service with terms and privacy pages (15). The transition notice says when Cloud data deletion begins (20 November) and that all user data is deleted when the app shuts down in early 2027 (20 of 30). Dated shutdown notice (15 of 20). SOC 2 report on a trust portal, subprocessors not read (10 of 20). 15 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 60.

Agent Zero 54

Harness reading of the framework checklist, the one the Goose calibration dossier uses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No usage telemetry was found in the source. An update check, on by default, posts the version and a 20-character SHA-256 hash of a random per-install id to api.agent-zero.ai. The Update Checker settings page says only that ID and the version are sent and has an off switch. Something still leaves the machine by default, so the partial is kept (22). The agent works inside a Docker container built on Kali Linux and runs as root there. Tool Access can block tools by project or profile and defaults to allow, host access through the A0 CLI is scoped by read, write and execute permissions, and no approval step was found before a shell command, a file deletion or an outgoing message. The web interface has no login until a username is set (10). Infection Check audits the agent's reasoning with a second model before each tool call and ships disabled. Scanners check plugins, skills and MCP servers before install. The channel allow-lists accept every sender when empty, and the email filter matches the claimed From address only, which the plugin README states (7). Chat logs, visible tool steps and Time Travel snapshots, with no per-call audit log. Per-process log files were removed in v2.5 (9). No SECURITY.md on 4 November, security.txt answered 404 on 12 October, and none of the eight CVEs published from 17 March to 22 October 2026 came from the vendor (VulDB, VulnCheck, MITRE and CISA assigned them). A security-review ledger in the repository records two findings, and the v2.12 notes name both fixes (6, a partial kept).

Conductor 45

Closed app. Telemetry and data handling weren't read beyond the transition notice (10 of 30). A security and permissions page (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance found (5). No audit log found (5). SOC 2 Type II report at trust.conductor.build (15 of 20). 10 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 15 = 45.

Agent Zero 62

Harness reading, scored on what a person or program driving it must supply. Skills load on demand, blocked tools are removed from the prompt, chats can be compacted, and the v2.12 notes report Codex input falling from about 16.4K to 11.3K tokens, a vendor figure (18 of 25). An MCP tool timeout of 120 seconds, a limit of five consecutive unusable responses and context-window handling are set by default. No turn or spend limit was found in the reviewed docs (11 of 20). Other programs reach it through POST /api_message, an optional MCP server, A2A and an ACP bridge, with request and response shapes left to the source (11 of 20). An error-retry plugin, saved chats, a message queue, backups and Time Travel snapshots with diff and revert (14 of 20). One Docker command starts it and a wizard sets the model, but there is no SDK and the default has no login (8 of 15).

Conductor 55

Harness reading. Each task gets a workspace, branch, terminal and diff, with pull requests and merges from the app, and an API for integrations; not re-read in detail (55).