# Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Temporal

> Temporal has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 53 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-temporal
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-temporal.md (~1,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-temporal.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orkes-conductor-vs-temporal.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: 2026-10-05

Temporal has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 53 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
- Temporal: grade BB, 77.2/100, rank #21 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/temporal.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/temporal.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Orkes Conductor Human tasks for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Temporal for reliability (+53), schema & documentation (+26), agent ergonomics (+16), security & auth (+15), maintenance & community (+9), transparency & trust (+24).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Temporal | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 32 | 85 | Temporal +53 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 91 | Temporal +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 85 | Temporal +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 86 | Temporal +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 90 | Temporal +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 46 | 70 | Temporal +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.2 · C** | **77.2 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Temporal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Orkes | Temporal Technologies |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor) | MIT |
| 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 | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.conductor-oss/conductor-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | 2026-09-15 |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.6/5 (8) |

## 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.

**Temporal.** Waits of any length with a timeout survive worker restarts and deploys. No reviewer inbox, notifications or routing, so the human side is all your code.

## 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

### Temporal

1. Put the decision in a typed Signal payload (approver, decision, comments, timestamp) instead of a bare boolean
2. Always wait with a timeout and treat the timeout path as a rejection or an escalation on purpose
3. Use the workflow ID as the approval ID, so the reviewer's tool only needs one value to send the Signal
4. Use an Update instead of a Signal when the approver's tool needs an acknowledgement back
5. Expect `ResourceExhausted` under load and let the SDK retry it, since signals are throttled last

## Other comparisons with Orkes Conductor Human tasks or Temporal

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