# Conductor vs Orca (slim)

> Orca scores 57.4 (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-orca.md (~4,400 tokens) · this version ~1,130 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-orca.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-orca
- 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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Orca scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Orca: C 57.4, rank #791 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orca.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.
- Orca, good for Developers who want an orchestrator agent to split work across parallel coding agents, on desktop or mobile. Ahead on Reliability, 58 against 25; Schema & documentation, 65 against 60; Agent ergonomics, 70 against 55; Payments & pricing, 40 against 0; Maintenance & community, 75 against 58. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | Conductor | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Orca |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | Lovecast Inc. |
| 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 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no document linked |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Orca +40: 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).); Orca 40 (Scored on the cloud option. No protocol (0). The cloud price wasn't found on the pages read (0). The desktop app is free and MIT with no card (20). The local app needs no sign-up that we found (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.)
- Reliability, Orca +33: 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.); Orca 58 (Local software. Desktop and mobile builds and a Homebrew cask (20). Unit, end-to-end and platform test workflows; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Tags to v1.4.251, no changelog file (8). Version 1.4 (15). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 15 = 58.)
- Maintenance & community, Orca +17: 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.); Orca 75 (Tags to v1.4.251 and commits on 6 November 2026 (30). Many releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). Extensive CI (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.)
- Agent ergonomics, Orca +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).); Orca 70 (Harness reading. An orchestrator agent that splits work across workers in their own workspaces, chat or raw CLI, a browser and a CLI in one app (70).)
- Schema & documentation, Orca +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).); Orca 65 (Harness reading. A docs site with CLI orchestration and native chat pages (65).)