# Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Restate

> Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Orkes Conductor Human tasks leads on security & auth. Both do hitl approve. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.min.md (~830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.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: 2026-10-08

Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Orkes Conductor Human tasks leads on security & auth. Both do hitl approve.

- Orkes Conductor Human tasks: grade C, 54/100, rank #537 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orkes-conductor.json
- Restate: grade BB, 73.3/100, rank #78 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/restate.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/restate.json

## Which one, for what

### Orkes Conductor Human tasks (C)

Good for: Teams that already orchestrate agents as Conductor workflows and need formal routing, per-assignee deadlines and escalation without writing them.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 71 against 61

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: No built-in Slack or email prompt, so alerts need a trigger policy and a second workflow

### Restate (BB)

Good for: A team that already writes agent steps as durable handlers and wants a long, cheap wait for a human answer in TypeScript, Python, Java, Go or Rust, with the option to self-host.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 91 against 32
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 81 against 69
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 92 against 81
- Transparency & trust, 50 against 44

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email. The approval request and the reply endpoint are the builder's code


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Restate | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 32 | 91 | Restate +59 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 85 | Restate +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 81 | Restate +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 61 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Restate +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 92 | Restate +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 44 | 50 | Restate +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54 · C** | **73.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Restate |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Orkes | Restate GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor) | BSL 1.1 converting to Apache-2.0 four years after release (server), MIT (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 19 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.conductor-oss/conductor-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2022-02-23 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 4.5k stars, 329k npm/wk, 76k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | none |

## 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.

**Restate.** An awakeable pauses a handler at no compute cost and resumes it from one HTTP request, with a durable timeout, on a free plan of 100,000 actions a month. Restate sends nothing to the approver, so the Slack message, email or inbox is the builder's code, and the published terms and privacy statement predate the paid plans.

## 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

### Restate

1. Create the awakeable, send its ID inside `ctx.run`, then await the promise, so a retry doesn't send a second approval request
2. Resolve with `POST /restate/awakeables/<id>/resolve` and a JSON body, or `/reject` with a text reason, which throws a terminal error in the handler
3. On Restate Cloud send `Authorization: Bearer key_...` to `https://<env_id>.env.<region>.restate.cloud:8080`. On a self-hosted server put an authenticating proxy in front of port 8080
4. Wrap the wait in `orTimeout` and decide what a timeout means. Without it the handler waits with no limit
5. Retry ingress errors only on 408, 425, 429 or 5xx, and only when `x-restate-error-source` isn't `invocation`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Orkes Conductor Human tasks or Restate?

Restate scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Orkes Conductor Human tasks leads on security & auth.

### Are Orkes Conductor Human tasks and Restate open source?

Orkes Conductor Human tasks is open source (Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor)). No open-source release is listed for Restate.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-restate.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "orkes-conductor", "b": "restate"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare orkes-conductor restate`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orkes-conductor.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/restate.json

## Other comparisons with Orkes Conductor Human tasks or Restate

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