# Conductor vs Prime Agent (slim)

> Prime Agent scores 56.8 (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-prime-agent.md (~6,000 tokens) · this version ~2,280 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-prime-agent.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-prime-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)

Prime Agent scores 56.8 (C) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Conductor leads on schema & documentation. Both do agent harnesses.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Prime Agent: C 56.8, rank #815 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/prime-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 Schema & documentation, 60 against 45. Also No incidents deducted, where Prime Agent loses 3 points for them.
- Prime Agent, good for Long-running research and coding work where one model drives subagents, schedules and goals from code, and where the owner can isolate the machine. Ahead on Reliability, 58 against 25; Agent ergonomics, 73 against 55; Security & auth, 50 against 45; Payments & pricing, 60 against 0; Maintenance & community, 79 against 58; Transparency & trust, 67 against 53. Also No key needed to call it; Free to start without a card; Open source.

| Category | Conductor | Prime Agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 58 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 45 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 73 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 67 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Prime Agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | Prime Intellect |
| 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 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no date given |
| 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 | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | none | 22k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Prime 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).); Prime Agent 60 (Self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free and MIT-licensed with nothing to buy, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. The model provider is paid separately.)
- Reliability, Prime Agent +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.); Prime Agent 58 (Read with the local-software lines. The installer's stable channel now points at v0.10.2 (28 October 2026), the Rust build, with checksummed binaries for macOS and Linux on x64 and arm64 and for Windows x64, read from the channel manifest on 3 November 2026 (20). A public CI workflow runs fmt, clippy with warnings as errors, sharded workspace tests and cargo-deny on main. Its badge read passing on 8 October, but GitHub's pages answered 403 on 3 November, so the current pass state is unread (15). 20 open issues and 91 open pull requests on 8 October, with Discussions bug reports of session-worker crashes, truncated RPC output and provider hangs whose reply state we did not read, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 3 November (15). A dated CHANGELOG.md now covers 0.10.1 (21 October) and 0.10.2 (28 October), and 0.10.1 records the removal of the `--tools` flags, but no entry is marked breaking, 0.10.0 (9 October) has no entry and the project is at 0.x (8). Version 0.10.2, pre-1.0 (0). 20 + 15 + 15 + 8 + 0 = 58.)
- Maintenance & community, Prime Agent +21: 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.); Prime Agent 79 (Stable v0.10.2 on 28 October 2026, six days before this check (30). 20 stable tags from v0.6.1 (5 August) to v0.10.2 in the 90 days from 5 August, beside more than 140 nightly beta tags since 30 September that a default install doesn't get (20). About 800 commits on main since 5 August. Issues from unapproved contributors and unsolicited pull requests are closed automatically, and reply times in Discussions are unread, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 3 November (14). Binaries for five targets from one release workflow and Homebrew definitions in the repository. No SDK and no registry package found (8). A pinned toolchain, a committed lockfile and cargo-deny with two triaged advisory exceptions reviewed on 17 September 2026. CI passing per the 8 October check (not re-read), and the npm audit findings in issue #3292 not verified (7). 30 + 20 + 14 + 8 + 7 = 79.)
- Agent ergonomics, Prime Agent +18: 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).); Prime Agent 73 (Harness reading, scored on what a person or pipeline driving it has to supply. The model sees three tools (bash, edit, ipython), and MCP tools are searched, described and called from Python instead of being loaded into the prompt (23). Autonomous mode has limits for turns, tokens, time and continuations, a goal token budget and automatic compaction (17). A JSON event stream and exit codes for headless runs, described in the crate README and source only (10). Sessions resume, the daemon restarts workers and restores from JSONL files, refinements can be rolled back and quality gates retry (15). One command starts it and no SDK was found. A provider must be chosen through an interactive `/login` or supplied as a key first (8).)
- Schema & documentation, Conductor +15: 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).); Prime Agent 45 (Harness reading of the framework line. `--mode json` emits a session event stream and `rpc` and `acp` modes exist, but we found no published schema or reference for them outside the source (10). docs.primeintellect.ai serves an llms.txt that still had no Prime Agent page on 3 November 2026 (0). The README states what the agent does, how it differs and that it is not a sandbox, and the bundled skills say when to use each function (10). CLI values are validated with messages that list the valid choices, and MCP tool schemas are read live from the server (7). The README gives the install line and the main commands, the repository's docs folder adds Slack and Google Workspace MCP connector guides, and the MCP skill documents its error types, but there is no headless or configuration guide (5). Versioned stable releases and, since 0.10.1 on 21 October 2026, a dated CHANGELOG.md in the repository. 0.10.0 has no entry and the nightly betas have none of substance (13). 10 + 0 + 10 + 7 + 5 + 13 = 45.)
- Transparency & trust, Prime Agent +14: 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.); Prime Agent 67 (MIT in the LICENSE file and Cargo.toml, with a notice that the code is a port of a TypeScript product originally copyright Mario Zechner (30). The first-run notice and the telemetry crate README say what is sent and what is excluded, and name the endpoint and PostHog, but the vendor privacy policy, re-read on 3 November 2026, is still dated 23 February 2024, does not describe agent telemetry and gives no retention period for it (12). No deprecation policy found. Removed flags are recorded in change fragments and, since 0.10.1, in CHANGELOG.md (5). Telemetry is disclosed with a setting, a command and two environment variables to turn it off (20). 30 + 12 + 5 + 20 = 67.)