# Conductor vs Emdash (slim)

> Emdash scores 53.9 (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-emdash.md (~4,550 tokens) · this version ~1,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-emdash.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-emdash
- 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
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Emdash scores 53.9 (D) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Conductor leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Emdash: D 53.9, rank #927 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.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. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 60 against 55; Security & auth, 45 against 38.
- Emdash, good for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH. Ahead on Reliability, 55 against 25; Payments & pricing, 60 against 0; Maintenance & community, 70 against 58. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Conductor | Emdash |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 55 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 55 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 38 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 70 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Emdash |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | General Action, Inc. |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's terms | Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no document linked |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Emdash +60: 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).); Emdash 60 (Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.)
- Reliability, Emdash +30: 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.); Emdash 55 (Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.)
- Maintenance & community, Emdash +12: 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.); Emdash 70 (v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.)
- Security & auth, Conductor +7: 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.); Emdash 38 (Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.)
- Schema & documentation, Conductor +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).); Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).)