ConductorvsMaestro
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Conductor
Conductor · Agent harness
Panel
5.80 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.0
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 5.8
“Pro lets you collaborate with up to five other Pro users, which is how you know the company had five people.”
Maestro
Maestro · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
7.05 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 7.5
- Longevity
- 6.2
“There is a built-in web server with QR access, so you can now supervise a fleet of agents from a restaurant.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Conductor | Maestro |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local, cloud | local |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | YesA maestro-cli binary runs playbooks headlessly from cron or CI with human-readable or JSONL output. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode) | Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Factory Droid, Copilot CLI |
| Bring your own model | No | Yes |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | byok |
| Starts at | $50/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | proprietary | AGPL-3.0 |
| GitHub stars | n/a | 3,389 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Conductor | Maestro | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 7.3 | Maestro — Pick it when you are running several projects and each task deserves a clean start; pick one agent and your full attention if you are only running one thing. |
| El Crítico | 5.8 | 6.3 | Maestro — A moderator model runs group chats between agents, and nothing documents how it arbitrates, so a disagreement between two agents is settled by a third with no stated rule. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 7.3 | Maestro — Sub-agents work in their own git worktrees on isolated branches, which makes parallelism a property of the filesystem rather than a promise about scheduling. |
| La Inversora | 6.8 | 6.5 | Conductor — YC-backed, Pro at $50 a month for a Mac app over other people's agents, and a hosting bill it currently eats; the acquirer is whoever runs the sandboxes. |
| La Jefa | 5.8 | 6.5 | Maestro — A command-line binary runs the same playbooks from cron or a pipeline with structured output, which is the first thing in this category I could actually measure. |
| El Hacker | 3.8 | 8.0 | Maestro — AGPL-3.0, and it passes straight through to the agent CLI I already configured, so my MCP servers, skills and permission rules arrive unchanged instead of being reimplemented badly. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.