# Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Permit MCP Gateway

> Permit MCP Gateway has a score of 54.5 (C) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 38 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-permit-mcp-gateway
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-permit-mcp-gateway.md (~1,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-permit-mcp-gateway.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-permit-mcp-gateway.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Permit MCP Gateway has a score of 54.5 (C) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 38 points.

- Orkes Conductor Human tasks: grade C, 54.2/100, rank #327 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orkes-conductor.json
- Permit MCP Gateway: grade C, 54.5/100, rank #321 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/permit-mcp-gateway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/permit-mcp-gateway.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Orkes Conductor Human tasks for schema & documentation (+12), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+38).

Pick Permit MCP Gateway for reliability (+15), agent ergonomics (+14), security & auth (+9).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Permit MCP Gateway | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 32 | 47 | Permit MCP Gateway +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 53 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 83 | Permit MCP Gateway +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 80 | Permit MCP Gateway +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 10 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 43 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +38 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 46 | 45 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.2 · C** | **54.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Permit MCP Gateway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Orkes | Permit.io |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` | `https://{subdomain}.agent.security/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor) | none |
| Tools exposed | 19 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.conductor-oss/conductor-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | none |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Orkes Conductor Human tasks.** Escalation chains with a time limit per assignee and a choice of leaving the task open or failing the workflow. No built-in Slack or email prompt, so alerts need a trigger policy and a second workflow.

**Permit MCP Gateway.** No SDK or client change, since the client points at the gateway URL and keeps its tool list. Approvals are Enterprise only, through a demo, with no published price.

## Before you call either

### Orkes Conductor Human tasks

1. Give every assignment you want to escalate from a non-zero `slaMinutes`, since 0 never expires and nothing can follow it
2. Pick `TERMINATE` for risky actions so an unanswered approval fails the workflow instead of staying open to anyone
3. Start approval workflows with an `idempotencyKey` and `RETURN_EXISTING`, so a retried start doesn't ask twice
4. Refresh the JWT from `/api/token` with a set expiry instead of requesting one that never expires
5. Fetch single doc pages, not llms.txt, which is the whole documentation in 2.57 MB

### Permit MCP Gateway

1. Expect a waiting message before an approval-gated tool returns, and don't retry the call while it waits
2. Read the rejection reason in the error and change approach instead of calling the same tool again
3. Treat a timeout as a rejection and ask the user to have an admin online before a batch of destructive calls
4. Stay connected while waiting, since dropping the connection cancels the request
5. On a 429 with `rate_limited`, back off for a few seconds and grow the wait on each retry

## Other comparisons with Orkes Conductor Human tasks or Permit MCP Gateway

- [gotoHuman vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gotohuman-vs-orkes-conductor.md)
- [gotoHuman vs Permit MCP Gateway](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gotohuman-vs-permit-mcp-gateway.md)
- [Inngest vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-orkes-conductor.md)
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- [Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Pushary](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-pushary.md)
- [Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Temporal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-temporal.md)
- [Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Trigger.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-trigger-dev.md)
- [Permit MCP Gateway vs Pushary](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/permit-mcp-gateway-vs-pushary.md)
- [Permit MCP Gateway vs Temporal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/permit-mcp-gateway-vs-temporal.md)
- [Permit MCP Gateway vs Trigger.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/permit-mcp-gateway-vs-trigger-dev.md)