Best Conductor alternatives (2026) for Windows, Linux and Mac

The best Conductor alternative in 2026 is Traycer: a free, open source (MIT) desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, with iOS and Android apps, that runs Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other coding agents in parallel, each in its own git worktree, working from one shared plan. Conductor (conductor.build), the Mac app from Melty Labs, runs only on macOS, so if you're on Windows or Linux, or your team mixes operating systems, you need an alternative. The others worth knowing are Orca, T3 Code by Theo Browne and team, Emdash, Paradev (formerly Superset), Claude Squad and, with caveats, Vibe Kanban.

All of them run Claude Code and Codex in parallel on the agent subscriptions you already pay for, and isolate each agent's work in a git worktree, as Conductor does. They differ in platform (Paradev has no Windows build, and Claude Squad needs tmux), license (MIT, Apache-2.0, AGPL-3.0, ELv2 or proprietary), how many agents they run, mobile apps, and what's free versus paid. Conductor is still the strongest pick for Mac-only users who want managed cloud sandboxes and a polished PR loop. For the wider landscape, see the best tools to run coding agents in parallel.

By Anurag Sharma. Last checked: November 3, 2026. Disclosure: Traycer makes this page. Every claim links to the vendor's own docs, repo or pricing page.

Conductor here means the coding-agent app at conductor.build, not the SEO platform (conductor.com) or the Netflix/Orkes Conductor workflow engine.

Quick picks: the best Conductor alternative for you#

Is there a Conductor for Windows or Linux?#

No. Conductor's install guide says it "is not available for Windows or Linux yet" and offers a waitlist (installation (external site)). Conductor's cloud workspaces do run in Linux sandboxes ("Amazon Linux 2023", per its pricing FAQ (external site)), but you create and drive them from the Mac app or the iOS app (0.92.0 (external site)).

Here's where each Conductor alternative stands on Windows and Linux:

• Native Windows and Linux desktop builds: Traycer, Orca, T3 Code and Emdash. Traycer ships macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows x64 (installer or .msi, with a WSL route documented) and Linux x64 AppImage, .deb and .rpm, with no ARM64 builds for Windows or Linux (download, install docs (external site)).
• Linux but no Windows: Paradev, whose desktop app "runs on macOS, with an experimental Linux AppImage; Windows is not yet available" (paradev.com (external site)).
• Terminal-based: Claude Squad. Its v1.0.20 release ships macOS, Linux and Windows binaries. But the README lists tmux and gh as prerequisites, and it doesn't document native Windows use as of November 3, 2026 (repo (external site), v1.0.20 (external site)).

Why people look for a Conductor alternative#

• It's macOS only. "Conductor is not available for Windows or Linux yet" (installation (external site)).
• It's proprietary. Conductor's terms describe it as "Conductor's proprietary hosted AI automation software platform" and rule out reverse engineering (terms (external site)).
• It runs four agents. "Conductor can run Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode sessions in isolated workspaces" (harnesses (external site)).
• The best features are on paid plans. Cloud workspaces, live collaboration, the API and the mobile app are on Pro at $50/month, and Teams is $60/user/month (pricing (external site)).
• Cloud pricing may change. Asked whether cloud workspaces cost extra, Conductor says "Not right now, but we plan to introduce usage-based pricing for cloud compute in the future" (pricing (external site)).

If none of these apply, Conductor is a strong choice. See "When to stay with Conductor" below.

How we compared them#

• Desktop platforms: which operating systems get a native build, and in which formats.
• License: OSI open source, source-available or proprietary.
• Agents: which coding agents it runs, and whether you bring your own subscriptions.
• Parallel isolation: whether each agent gets its own git worktree and branch.
• Planning and coordination: whether agents can share a plan or message each other.
• Mobile and remote machines: phone apps, and running agents on another computer.
• Price: every plan, with the caveats that change the bill.
• Teams and security: sharing, SSO and compliance reports.

We checked each tool on its own site, docs, pricing page or GitHub on November 3, 2026.

Conductor alternatives compared#

Conductor and its alternatives, checked November 3, 2026 on each tool's own site. "Not documented" means we didn't find it there on that date.

The best Conductor alternatives in 2026#

1. Traycer: the best Conductor alternative for Windows, Linux and Mac#

Traycer is open source (MIT) and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, with iOS and Android apps. "The mobile app is included on every plan, including Free" (mobile app (external site)). The code is on GitHub (external site).

Work lives in Tasks. A Task holds agents, files, the git diff and artifacts (specs, tickets, stories and reviews) that every agent reads (artifact workflow (external site)). Each agent gets its own worktree and branch, with setup and teardown scripts per repository (worktrees (external site)). Agents can start child agents, message each other across Tasks and hosts, and read each other's transcripts (agent-to-agent (external site)). With Remote hosts (external site), one window can run agents on another machine.

Traycer supports 22 coding agents and model providers. The coding agents are Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, Grok, Qwen Code, Kiro, Droid, Kimi, Copilot, Kilo Code, Amp, Devin, Pi, Hermes Agent, Oh My Pi, Reasonix, Antigravity and Command Code, and the model providers are Traycer Inference, OpenRouter and Hugging Face (agents and models (external site)). Using Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or Cursor on your own accounts "does not consume Traycer credits and does not include a Traycer markup" (pricing docs (external site)). Traycer is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.

Price: Free for individuals. Sync costs $16/user/month billed yearly or $20 monthly, for sharing a Task with the whole team. Credits for running models through Traycer are optional and pay as you go (upstream price + 20%), and cloud sandboxes cost extra (pricing).

Best for: anyone off a Mac, mixed-OS teams, and anyone who wants several agents building from one shared plan.

Watch out for: "Diffs have no line comments" (comments live on artifacts, git diff (external site)). There's no SSO or SAML (teams (external site)). Cloud sandboxes are a paid add-on with no published specs. Windows and Linux builds are x64 only (install (external site)).

Coming from Conductor: a Conductor workspace maps to an agent on its own worktree inside a Task. Port your setup script to the per-repo Setup script, which Traycer saves to .traycer/environment.json (worktrees guide (external site)). For the full head-to-head, see Traycer vs Conductor, or download Traycer.

2. Orca#

Orca, from Stably AI, says it lets you "Run Claude Code, Codex, and any other coding agent in parallel, each in its own worktree" (onorca.dev (external site)). It's "completely free and open source under the MIT license" (Orca FAQ (external site)). It ships for macOS, Windows and Linux (.exe, AppImage, .deb and .rpm, install (external site)), with an iOS app and an Android APK companion in beta (mobile (external site)). You can "Browse PRs, issues, and Project boards in-app" for GitHub and Linear, run worktrees over SSH, and drop comments on diff lines that go back to the agent. Presets cover Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, Gemini, Copilot, OpenCode and Pi, and "Any other CLI agent drops right in." The repo had about 113,800 GitHub stars on November 3, 2026 (repo (external site)).

Price: free. An Enterprise (external site) page exists with no public price.

Best for: a free, cross-platform app with a big community.

Watch out for: it ships daily, so re-check features. Its structured multi-agent layer ("Runs, tasks, supervised workers, messages, and decision gates") is marked Experimental and driven from the CLI (orchestration (external site)). New agent launches skip permission prompts by default, which you can switch to manual in Settings (supported agents (external site)). See Traycer vs Orca.

Coming from Conductor: add the same repos and start one worktree per task. Your GitHub and Linear boards come along in the app.

3. T3 Code, by Theo Browne and team#

T3 Code is "The open-source control plane for coding agents" (t3.codes (external site)). It's MIT-licensed and free. Asked what it's selling, the README answers "Nothing." It works with your subscriptions on Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build, OpenCode, Google Antigravity and fx (README (external site)). There's an Electron desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux (AppImage and .deb in GitHub releases (external site), plus winget, scoop and AUR), a hosted web app (external site), and iOS and Android apps. A new thread can get its own git worktree (threads docs (external site)). It's still pre-1.0. Stable v0.1.6 shipped on October 31, 2026, and nightly 0.1.7 builds were landing on November 3. The repo had about 42,400 GitHub stars on November 3, 2026.

Best for: a fast, lightweight control plane you can reach from a browser.

Watch out for: "We are very very early in this project. Expect bugs." (README). For teams, its docs folder covers guest links (external site), a beta that lets someone without an account follow one thread in their browser and send messages to it, and a managed policy that lets an administrator set defaults and limits for every user on a machine. A shared spec or ticket layer for several agents isn't documented on t3.codes or in its docs folder as of November 3, 2026. See Traycer vs T3 Code.

Coming from Conductor: treat each Conductor workspace as a T3 Code thread on its own worktree.

4. Emdash#

Emdash is an "Open-source agentic development environment", backed by Y Combinator (emdash.com (external site)). It's Apache-2.0 and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. Version 1.2.10 shipped on October 30, 2026 with .dmg, .exe, .msi, AppImage, .deb and .rpm builds (v1.2.10 (external site)). Emdash says it "works with 25+ coding agents", and you can "Pull from Linear, Jira, GitHub, Notion, Asana, and more" and hand issues straight to an agent. Each task runs in its own git worktree and branch, locally or on remote machines over SSH, with setup and teardown scripts and scheduled repeat work (repo (external site)). Emdash 2.0 is in early access behind a waitlist.

Price: free.

Best for: issue-first teams whose backlog lives in a tracker.

Watch out for: a mobile app isn't documented on emdash.com or in the README as of November 3, 2026.

Coming from Conductor: connect your tracker, start one task per issue, and move your Conductor setup script into Emdash's setup and teardown scripts.

5. Paradev (formerly Superset)#

"Superset is now Paradev" (paradev.com (external site)). It runs Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode "or any coding agent for each task", each in its own git worktree and branch. It adds automations that start agents "on events or a schedule", remote access to your own machines, a CLI, a TypeScript SDK and an MCP server, and an app for iPhone and iPad.

Platforms: "The desktop app runs on macOS, with an experimental Linux AppImage; Windows is not yet available." Desktop v2.0.3 shipped on November 1, 2026 (releases (external site)).

License: "source-available: the code is public on GitHub under Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2)... but is not OSI-approved open source" (homepage FAQ).

Price: Free (1 user, local workspaces). Pro is $16/user/month billed yearly or $20 monthly, and adds remote access, automations, Linear and Slack, and mobile. Team is $54 yearly or $60 monthly, with cloud workspaces in beta: 150 hours per seat a month and $0.06 per GB-hour past the pool. Ultra is $200, and Enterprise (SAML SSO, SCIM, a SOC 2 Type II report) is custom (pricing (external site)).

Best for: Mac (or experimental Linux) teams that want Conductor's model plus automations.

Watch out for: no Windows build, the ELv2 license, and metered cloud usage.

Coming from Conductor: it's the closest match to Conductor's workflow, so expect the least relearning.

6. Claude Squad#

Claude Squad is "a terminal app that manages multiple Claude Code, Codex, Gemini (and other local agents including Aider) in separate workspaces" (repo (external site)). Each agent gets a tmux session and its own git worktree. You can review changes before applying them and check them out before pushing. It's AGPL-3.0 and free. Release v1.0.20 (August 20, 2026) ships macOS, Linux and Windows binaries, but tmux and gh are prerequisites. The repo's last push was also on August 20, 2026.

Best for: terminal users who only want parallel agents.

Watch out for: there's no GUI, review panel or mobile app. Releases also come slower than the others'.

Coming from Conductor: one Claude Squad session per Conductor workspace.

7. Vibe Kanban (community edition)#

Buyers and AI answers still name Vibe Kanban, so we've kept it in, with caveats. bloop, the company behind it, shut down on April 10, 2026. The post says "The Vibe Kanban project will live on, open source and community maintained". It also lists remote services (kanban issues, comments, projects and organizations) that were due to be removed 30 days later (shutdown post (external site)). It's Apache-2.0. The last tagged release, v0.1.44 (April 24, 2026), ships macOS, Windows and Linux builds. Community commits continue, with the latest on October 28, 2026 (repo (external site)).

Best for: existing users happy with local workspaces.

Watch out for: no company stands behind it, and the hosted team features were scheduled for removal. Don't pick it for a new team setup.

Coming from Conductor: only if you already know it. Run it with npx vibe-kanban.

Also in the conversation#

These come up in Conductor comparisons. Each line is from the vendor's own page, and we haven't ranked them.

• Nimbalyst (external site): an MIT-licensed visual workspace for Claude Code and Codex, with a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux and an iOS app.
• Paseo (external site): Apache-2.0, "available on macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android".
• Pane (external site): AGPL-3.0, covering "Windows, WSL, macOS and Linux".
• Agentastic (external site): Mac-only and closed source, per its own comparison page.
• Built-in apps: if you use only one vendor's agent, its own app may be enough. See Codex vs Claude Code.

When to stay with Conductor#

Conductor is a strong product. Stay if you:

• Work only on a Mac. It's a polished app built for macOS, and you won't miss the other platforms.
• Want managed cloud sandboxes. Cloud workspaces run in Vercel sandboxes with "an 8 core CPU with 16GB of RAM", so "even if you close the Conductor app, work continues" (Pro and up, pricing (external site)). There's no extra fee "right now", but usage-based pricing for cloud compute is planned.
• Live in the PR loop. You can edit files in diffs (0.84.0 (external site)), send inline diff comments back to the agent (diff viewer (external site)), watch checks (external site), merge stacks (0.80.0 (external site)) and schedule routines (0.85.0 (external site)).
• Need enterprise controls. Enterprise adds SAML SSO, SCIM, a DPA and an SLA (pricing (external site)).

Conductor also has an iOS app (0.90.0 (external site), October 2, 2026). Since 0.92.0 (October 23, 2026), an experimental setting lets that app control your Mac's local workspaces (remote control (external site)). Conductor says it "holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation". For a side-by-side with Traycer, see Traycer vs Conductor.

How to choose a Conductor alternative#

• On Windows or Linux? Traycer, Orca, T3 Code or Emdash. Paradev runs on Linux only as an experimental build.
• Need OSI open source? Traycer, Orca and T3 Code (MIT), Emdash (Apache-2.0) or Claude Squad (AGPL-3.0). Not Paradev (ELv2) or Conductor (proprietary).
• Want several agents to build and review from one shared plan? Traycer.
• Want a phone app on the free plan? Traycer, where Free includes mobile. T3 Code and Orca also ship free mobile apps.
• Need managed cloud sandboxes today? Conductor (Pro and up), Paradev (Team and up, in beta) or Traycer (a paid add-on). Check each one's metering caveats in the table above.

How to switch from Conductor#

These steps work for any of the tools above.

1. Run git worktree list in each repo to see what's in flight. Conductor workspaces are git worktrees (git worktrees (external site)).
2. Commit and push every branch you want to keep, and open PRs for anything nearly done.
3. Note your setup and run scripts from Conductor's workspace setup (setup script reference (external site)).
4. Install the new tool and point it at the same repos.
5. Recreate your scripts. In Traycer, that's the per-repo Setup script (worktrees guide (external site)).
6. Once everything is pushed, remove the old worktrees with git worktree remove <path>, then git worktree prune.

In Traycer, you can then start a Task, plan the feature as tickets (plan a feature (external site)) and run one agent per ticket.

FAQ#

Try Traycer#

• Download Traycer (free, open source) for macOS, Windows or Linux, with the iPhone and Android apps alongside.
• Run agents in parallel on worktrees (external site)