head to head · open source
conductor vs harmonist
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars, 1,012 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. harmonist has 2,257 stars, 206 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. conductor leads on adoption by 1,327% (32,213 vs 2,257 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; harmonist is written in Python under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, harmonist 9%. 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 | harmonist | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-06-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 harmonist if
- You want the harmonist feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and harmonist 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 harmonist
harmonist is an MIT licensed, dependency free Python framework that adds multi agent orchestration and mechanically enforced protocol to AI coding assistants such as Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Windsurf, and Aider, and it serves individual developers and teams who need agent workflows to obey engineering rules rather than merely be asked to follow them.
read the full harmonist overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or harmonist more popular?
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars and harmonist has 2,257. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and harmonist free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and harmonist under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and harmonist?
conductor is written in Java and harmonist in Python. 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 harmonist?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,213 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose harmonist if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.