# Orkes Conductor Human tasks vs Trigger.dev

> Trigger.dev has a score of 74.8 (BB) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 43 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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

Trigger.dev has a score of 74.8 (BB) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 43 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
- Trigger.dev: grade BB, 74.8/100, rank #46 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/trigger-dev.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/trigger-dev.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 Trigger.dev for reliability (+43), schema & documentation (+26), agent ergonomics (+10), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+9), transparency & trust (+28).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Trigger.dev | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 32 | 75 | Trigger.dev +43 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 91 | Trigger.dev +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 79 | Trigger.dev +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 73 | Trigger.dev +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Trigger.dev +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 90 | Trigger.dev +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 46 | 74 | Trigger.dev +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.2 · C** | **74.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Trigger.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Orkes | Trigger.dev |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` | `https://api.trigger.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor) | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 19 | 31 |
| 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 | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.conductor-oss/conductor-mcp` | `io.github.triggerdotdev/trigger.dev` |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | 2026-10-01 |
| 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.

**Trigger.dev.** Tokens complete from a backend, a pre-signed callback URL or the browser with a token scoped to one waitpoint. 10-minute default timeout on tokens.

## 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

### Trigger.dev

1. Pass an explicit `timeout` to `wait.createToken()` and handle `ok: false` as a timeout
2. Use an idempotency key when creating the token so a retried step doesn't send the reviewer a second request
3. Give the browser the `publicAccessToken`, never the secret key, and don't call `token.url` from client code
4. Tag tokens with the user or task ID so pending approvals can be listed per reviewer
5. Start the MCP server with `--readonly` when the agent only needs to inspect runs

## Other comparisons with Orkes Conductor Human tasks or Trigger.dev

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