head to head · open source
conductor vs swarmclaw
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,009 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swarmclaw has 673 stars, 137 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. conductor leads on adoption by 4,686% (32,207 vs 673 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; swarmclaw is written in TypeScript under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, swarmclaw 20%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | swarmclaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 673 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 137 |
| 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 swarmclaw if
- You want the swarmclaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and swarmclaw 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 swarmclaw
SwarmClaw is an open source, self hosted AI agent runtime and multi agent framework for autonomous agent swarms, written in TypeScript under the MIT licence for developers and operators who want to run AI agents and agent orchestration on their own infrastructure.
read the full swarmclaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or swarmclaw more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and swarmclaw has 673. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and swarmclaw free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and swarmclaw under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and swarmclaw?
conductor is written in Java and swarmclaw in TypeScript. 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 swarmclaw?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose swarmclaw if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.