# Conductor vs Crush (slim)

> Crush scores 49.8 (D) to Conductor's 41.3 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-crush.md (~5,500 tokens) · this version ~1,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-crush.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-crush
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Crush scores 49.8 (D) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Crush: D 49.8, rank #1072 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crush.min.md
- Conductor, good for Existing Conductor users planning their move before Cloud closes on 20 November 2026 and the local app winds down in early 2027. Also No incidents deducted, where Crush loses 6 points for them.
- Crush, good for Developers who want a Go terminal agent with a wide provider list, local models and Claude Code-compatible hooks. Ahead on Reliability, 52 against 25; Schema & documentation, 65 against 60; Payments & pricing, 55 against 0; Maintenance & community, 82 against 58; Transparency & trust, 59 against 53. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Conductor | Crush |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 52 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 52 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 41 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 55 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 82 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 59 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Crush |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | Charm |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| Licence | Proprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's terms | FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available) |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Popularity | none | 29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Crush +55: 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).); Crush 55 (No payment protocol (0). Scored on Charm's Hyper provider. Its public provider file at hyper.charm.land/v1/provider lists per-million-token figures for 22 models without a login, but no pricing page confirms them as billed rates, and plan prices sit in a script-rendered app (15). The CLI is free to use and runs with your own provider key or a local model, so nothing needs a card (20). A local model through Ollama, llama.cpp or LM Studio, or an existing provider key in the environment, works with no Charm account, so an agent can install it and run a task without a person signing up (20).)
- Reliability, Crush +27: 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.); Crush 52 (Local-package reading. `@charmland/crush` on npm, a Homebrew tap, Winget, Scoop, AUR, Nix, FreeBSD pkg, Charm's apt and yum repositories and release binaries, with supported platforms named in the README (20). The public build workflow runs `go test -race -failfast ./...` on Linux, macOS and Windows for every push to main and every pull request, but GitHub pages and the API answer 403 to us, so results are unread (15). The 18 October issue and pull request counts came from shields.io badges, a third-party copy of GitHub data, and are struck. The repository's own refs show 2,574 pull requests to #4224, 272 of them open with a merge ref, and 147 merges into main in the 90 days to 4 November. Crash and regression issues couldn't be read (10). Release notes are generated from commit messages, with no CHANGELOG file and no breaking-change headings found. The legacy JSON config is deprecated in favour of `crushrc` while still loading (7, held partial). v0.99.0, before 1.0, with no stability statement (0). 20 + 15 + 10 + 7 + 0 = 52.)
- Maintenance & community, Crush +24: 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.); Crush 82 (v0.99.0 tagged on 29 October 2026 (6 days, 30). 21 release tags from 7 August to 29 October, v0.88.1 to v0.99.0, besides a moving `nightly` tag that isn't counted (20). The 18 October shields.io counts are struck. The repository's refs show 147 merges into main and 438 commits in the 90 days to 4 November, with 272 open pull requests carrying a merge ref, and new contributors signing the CLA most days. Reply times couldn't be read (12). No SDK, as with other harnesses. npm, Homebrew, Winget, Scoop, apt, yum and NUR builds come from the release workflow (12, held partial). Dependabot, a `go mod tidy` check in CI and nightly security scans, with CI results unread (8). 30 + 20 + 12 + 12 + 8 = 82.)
- Transparency & trust, Crush +6: 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.); Crush 59 (FSL-1.1-MIT, source-available, barring competing commercial use and converting each release to MIT on its second anniversary. Code from before 30 May 2025 is MIT. Not an OSI licence today (20). No privacy policy or terms for Crush were found on charm.land, and Hyper's legal pages render by script and weren't read. The README says Hyper is zero-data-retention, while Hyper's own app says some plans aren't and that usage on them may train Hyper's models, so the statements don't agree (8). The JSON config is marked deprecated with no removal date, and no deprecation policy was found (6). The README discloses usage metrics, links the source, says prompts aren't collected and gives two opt-outs, but doesn't mention the alias to the Hyper account (15).)
- Schema & documentation, Crush +5: Conductor 60 (Harness reading. Docs for workspaces, review and merge, a Conductor API reference page linked from the docs (not read), and security and permissions pages (60).); Crush 65 (Harness reading of the framework line. A JSON Schema for the config at https://charm.land/crush.json (also printed by `crush schema`), `--json` on the session commands, and an OpenAPI document that `crush server` generates from its endpoint list and serves at `/v1/docs/openapi.json`, which isn't published anywhere we could fetch. `crush run` output has no typed form (20). No llms.txt (charm.land/llms.txt is a not-found page). The docs are Markdown in the repository and the hooks guide says it was written for humans and agents (5). The README and config docs explain when to allow, deny or hook a tool and warn that configs run as code (12). The schema carries enums and defaults, such as the attribution trailer style, while permissions take bare tool names with no command patterns (11). Many examples for providers, MCP, hooks and local models, with no reference for error messages or exit codes (9). Version tags and GitHub releases with generated notes, which we couldn't open, and no changelog file (8).)