# Conductor vs Parallax (slim)

> Conductor scores 41.3 (E) to Parallax's 38.1 (E) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-parallax-agents.md (~5,100 tokens) · this version ~1,580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-parallax-agents.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-parallax-agents
- 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)

Conductor scores 41.3 (E) on agent readiness against Parallax's 38.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Parallax leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Parallax: E 38.1, rank #1343 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/parallax-agents.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 29; Agent ergonomics, 55 against 42.
- Parallax, good for A developer on a Mac who runs several coding agents across Claude and Codex subscriptions and wants cross-lab review of finished sessions on GitHub. Ahead on Reliability, 40 against 25; Payments & pricing, 30 against 0.

| Category | Conductor | Parallax |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 29 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 42 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 43 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 56 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 50 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Parallax |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | Conifer Solutions, Inc. |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| Licence | Proprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's terms | Proprietary, under Conifer's Terms of Service (Conifer Solutions, Inc.). The GitHub repository holds the README and release binaries, not the source |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | 2026-10-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | 2026-10-22 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Schema & documentation, Conductor +31: 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).); Parallax 29 (The review API has no OpenAPI or endpoint reference. Endpoints appear only in curl examples, and the base URL `$PARALLAX_URL` is not published (0). conifer.build/llms.txt covers the gateway in detail and Parallax in two lines that point to the docs (5). The docs explain sessions, sweeps, evidence states, memory and retention at length, but nothing documents the app, Captain, fallback or fast merge (8). parallax.yml keys are listed with allowed values (`deliver: proven-only`, `review: off`, severity floors, sweep modes), but request and response shapes for the API are not (5). curl examples, sample sweep lines and a table of skip reasons with the fix for each (8). Paths sit under `/v1`, with no changelog for Parallax (3).)
- Payments & pricing, Parallax +30: 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).); Parallax 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Parallax episode credit prices are read from the account after sign-in. Gateway token prices are public at `GET /v1/catalog` with no key, which covers Conifer credit spent by agents (10). $50 of Conifer credit and 5 free episodes on GitHub sign-up, with no card mentioned, and agents can run on the owner's own Claude and Codex subscriptions (20). A person has to download the app, sign in and install the GitHub App, so no autonomous onboarding (0).)
- Reliability, Parallax +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.); Parallax 40 (Read as local software, because the launched product is the app the owner runs. A signed and notarised universal DMG for macOS 12 or later and Linux tarballs for x86-64 and arm64 on GitHub Releases, with SHA256SUMS and an install script. No package registry (20). The release repository holds a README and binaries only, with no public CI or tests (0). We could not read its issues, because our GitHub access refused the issue pages, so the issue record is unchecked and scored absent (0). Semver tags v1.0.0 to v1.0.2, but no release notes or changelog we could read (5). Version 1.0.2 (15). The hosted review service has no status page and no published rate limits. conifer.build/uptime covers upstream model providers only.)
- Agent ergonomics, Conductor +13: 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).); Parallax 42 (Scored on the review API and the hooks, the only parts an agent touches. The session-start brief is cut at 6,000 characters, memory per review call at 12,000, and `lesson_cap` sets 1 to 20 lessons per person (8). `repo` filters on recall and brief, `brain=true` on the ledger, no documented pagination (4). Skip reasons such as `capture_commit_missing` and `test_configuration_missing` each come with a fix, but HTTP error codes for the API are not documented (12). A session is swept once per capture mark, retries use no extra credit, and a fix PR is reused and never reopened or merged by Parallax (14). No SDK for Parallax, and capture of every repository is the default (4).)