# Conductor vs mini-swe-agent (slim)

> mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) 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-mini-swe-agent.md (~5,700 tokens) · this version ~2,030 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-mini-swe-agent.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-mini-swe-agent
- 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)

mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Conductor leads on maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- mini-swe-agent: C 59, rank #715 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.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 Maintenance & community, 58 against 32.
- mini-swe-agent, good for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 25; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 55; Security & auth, 58 against 45; Payments & pricing, 60 against 0. Also No key needed to call it; Free to start without a card; Open source.

| Category | Conductor | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 65 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 58 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 58 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 32 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's terms | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Popularity | none | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, mini-swe-agent +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).); mini-swe-agent 60 (Self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free under MIT with nothing to buy (20). No card or account for the software, and it runs against a local model (20). An agent can install it from PyPI and run a task with no sign-up, given a model endpoint (20).)
- Reliability, mini-swe-agent +40: 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.); mini-swe-agent 65 (Read as a local package, graded on 2.4.6, the release `pip install mini-swe-agent` installs, and still the newest tag on 4 November 2026. One official PyPI package with Python 3.10 or newer stated (20). A pytest workflow runs on every push to main with Podman, bubblewrap and Apptainer installed, 41 test files and Codecov coverage, but GitHub's pages refused this run, so whether main passes is unconfirmed (15). Issue counts and types couldn't be read (the 18 October counts came from shields.io, a third-party copy, and are struck). The git remote shows outside bug fixes merged through 22 July, such as #915, #896 and #886, and nothing merged into main since apart from a pre-commit update on 17 August, while 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after #917 still carry open merge refs (10). Versions follow semver and v2's breaking changes came with a migration guide, but there's no changelog file and tags carry only a version bump (8). 2.4.6, past 1.0, though the PyPI classifier still says 3 - Alpha (12).)
- Maintenance & community, Conductor +26: 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.); mini-swe-agent 32 (2.4.6 on PyPI on 2026-07-23, 104 days before this check, and still the newest tag (10). No release in the 90 days to 4 November (0). Main hasn't moved since 3 September (three commits since 23 July, one from pre-commit-ci). Outside fixes were merged within days through July, but no pull request has been merged since #917 (17 August), 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after it still carry open merge refs on the git remote, and maintainer reply times couldn't be read; the 18 October shields.io counts are struck (5). The Python library ships in the same package as the CLI and is current (10). Dependabot and pre-commit-ci run, and CI workflows exist with their current state unconfirmed (7).)
- Agent ergonomics, mini-swe-agent +14: 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).); mini-swe-agent 69 (Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. One bash tool and a short system prompt, with output over 10,000 characters cut to its first and last 5,000, but no compaction of a long history (22). Step, cost and wall-time limits, global call and cost limits by environment variable, and a 30-second timeout per command (18). The trajectory JSON records Submitted, LimitsExceeded, TimeExceeded or RepeatedFormatError, but stdout is human-readable only and these aren't process exit codes (12). Model calls retry ten times with exponential backoff, and the trajectory is saved after every step, but there's no resume and no undo (8). Python bindings only. An unattended `mini` run needs `-y`, `--exit-immediately` and `MSWEA_CONFIGURED`, the last found only in the source (9). No MCP client, ACP or server mode.)
- Security & auth, mini-swe-agent +13: 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.); mini-swe-agent 58 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, used for every harness in this batch. 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 telemetry in mini's own source, and prompts go only to the configured provider. LiteLLM's own network behaviour wasn't checked (28). The CLI asks before each command by default, with regex whitelists and `-y` to skip, but the Python `DefaultAgent` never asks, the default local environment has no isolation and passes the full host environment to every command, and the experimental bubblewrap sandbox leaks host variables and shares the network (CVE-2026-108592). Docker forwards no host variables unless listed (8). No prompt-injection guidance found (2). A full trajectory of every command and output saved as JSON after each step, and a trajectory inspector (13). A security policy (docs/SECURITY.md) naming four maintainers to contact by email, with no response time, which meets the disclosure-policy reading at 7 as for cowagent and tokenrip. No bounty or advisory page, and CVE-2026-108592 (VulnCheck, 10 October) still has no fix in any release or on main. Compromised LiteLLM 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 are excluded in the dependency pins since 24 March 2026 (#794) (7).)