head to head · open source
conductor vs agent-orchestrator
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars, 1,012 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-orchestrator has 12,195 stars, 1,685 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped today. conductor leads on adoption by 164% (32,213 vs 12,195 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, agent-orchestrator 14%. agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (orchestrator), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| conductor | agent-orchestrator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick conductor if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-orchestrator if
- You want the agent-orchestrator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and agent-orchestrator fits your workflow better
About conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 licensed, event driven agentic workflow engine written in Java that provides durable and highly resilient execution for applications and AI agents, aimed at teams running microservices, AI agents, and adaptive workflow graphs that need orchestration they can version, inspect, and recover.
read the full conductor overview →
About agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator is an open source desktop workspace for running and supervising teams of coding agents, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the agent orchestration ecosystem, alongside the coding harnesses it drives, and it is distributed as a local application rather than as a hosted service. The project describes itself as a place to plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place, giving every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop.
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or agent-orchestrator more popular?
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars and agent-orchestrator has 12,195. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and agent-orchestrator free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-orchestrator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and agent-orchestrator?
conductor is written in Java and agent-orchestrator in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, conductor or agent-orchestrator?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,213 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-orchestrator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.