Conductor alternatives for Windows, Linux, and teams

Updated August 24, 2026 · first published July 10, 2026 · by the AQ team

Conductor is a Mac desktop app that runs parallel Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor agents in isolated workspaces, and it is genuinely good at that job. It moved fast in mid-2026: Conductor Cloud (launched July 30, 2026) lets agents keep working in hosted sandboxes after you close the app, and a multiplayer mode arrived for organizations on its invite-only Team plan. What has not changed is the reason most people search for alternatives: as of August 2026 Conductor is still a Mac app (Windows is a waitlist, no Linux version is announced), there is no browser version (cloud workspaces are driven from the Mac app, an iPhone app, or the API), and live collaboration is gated behind the invite-only Team tier. If you are on Windows or Linux today, the practical alternatives are AQ (browser-based, so it works from any OS), vibe-kanban (open source, local web UI), and OpenHands (open source, cloud or self-hosted). If the goal is teamwork rather than platform support, AQ, GitHub Copilot Agent HQ, and Warp Oz are the team-oriented options. Honest fit notes on all six below.

What Conductor does well, and where it stops

Conductor (conductor.build) is YC-backed with a $22M Series A, has a Linear integration, and its local mode remains free: parallel agents in isolated git worktrees on your own Mac, bring your own Claude or Codex subscription. In July 2026 it added Conductor Cloud: workspaces run in isolated cloud sandboxes with your repos and dependencies pre-installed, so agents keep working when you close the app or step away. Cloud workspaces are part of the Pro plan ($50 per month as of August 2026, which also includes the Conductor API and the iPhone app; cloud compute is included for now with usage pricing planned). Conductor Multiplayer lets people in the same Conductor org share a workspace and prompt agents together, but it ships on the Team plan ($60 per user per month), which is invite-only as of August 2026. Its funding and pace make it a safer bet than most tools in this fast-consolidating category (Crystal was deprecated in February 2026; Bloop, the company behind vibe-kanban, shut down in April 2026).

The gaps are not bugs, they are the shape of the product. It is a native Mac app: Windows and Linux developers are out until the waitlist converts into a release, and even Conductor Cloud is managed from the Mac app, the iPhone app, or the API rather than a browser. Collaboration exists now, but only inside an invite-only paid tier. And the cloud execution it added runs in Conductor's hosted sandboxes, not on infrastructure you control. If platform support, open collaboration, or running agents in your own cloud is your actual problem, here is the honest field.

Conductor alternatives at a glance

1. AQ: the same idea, in a browser, for a team, in your own cloud

AQ is the multiplayer coding harness where engineering teams run AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex together: shared live terminals, a code editor, and app previews, in your own cloud.

AQ answers the three constraints Conductor still has. Platform: it runs in the browser, so macOS, Windows, and Linux are equally first-class, and it works from a phone. Collaboration: workspaces are multiplayer by default rather than an invite-only tier; a teammate opens the same workspace and sees the same live terminal, editor, and dev-server preview, typing into someone else's terminal is delegated by its owner approving a control request in one click, you can keep a workspace private and share it with specific people, and guest preview links let outsiders see a running app without an account. Execution: agents run as real CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Kimi, Grok, plain shells) in persistent tmux sessions on a VM you connect from your own cloud or a dedicated AQ-managed VM, so sessions survive your laptop closing and resume from any device; that is a different posture from Conductor Cloud, where execution lives in the vendor's hosted sandboxes. Each workspace is an isolated git worktree (branch ai/{id}-{slug}, automatic dependency install, one-click rebase onto main), like Conductor's workspaces. It shares Conductor's Linear affinity and goes further: label an issue "ai-task" and a workspace appears, status syncs both ways, and ownership follows the assignee. Per-user CLI logins mean AQ never marks up your model usage. The full head-to-head is at AQ vs Conductor.

Fit: the direct answer for Windows and Linux developers and for teams that want collaboration without an invite gate. The trade is that the team experience is paid ($50 per user per month early access, standard $200), where Conductor's local single-player mode is free; AQ's Free plan is a no-time-limit personal sandbox on a private machine AQ creates, so evaluating it costs nothing.

2. vibe-kanban: free and cross-platform, if you accept community maintenance

vibe-kanban is an open source kanban board for orchestrating coding CLIs from a local web UI, so it is not tied to macOS. It is free and has a large community (roughly 28,000 GitHub stars as of August 2026). The caveat: Bloop, the company behind it, shut down in April 2026, and the project is community-maintained now under Apache 2.0, with slower releases and no commercial support. Fit: the free cross-platform pick for a solo developer who is comfortable with that risk profile. More detail in our vibe-kanban alternatives guide.

3. OpenHands: open source with a real deployment story

OpenHands (openhands.dev) is an open source platform for cloud coding agents: hosted cloud, self-hosted, or an enterprise Kubernetes runtime. Fit: the pick when the requirement is open source plus something an infrastructure team can actually operate. Unlike Conductor, it runs its own agent against your model keys rather than the CLIs you already subscribe to.

4. Cursor cloud agents: cross-platform via the editor you may already use

Cursor runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and its plans bundle cloud agents that execute on dedicated VMs in Cursor's cloud. As of August 2026 they can be driven from the editor, a browser (cursor.com/agents), the iOS app, or Slack, and can be triggered by events like a pull request or a schedule. Fit: if your team already pays for Cursor, this is the shortest path to parallel background agents on any OS. You get Cursor's agent in Cursor's cloud, not a choice of CLIs on your own infrastructure.

5. GitHub Copilot Agent HQ: agents where your code already lives

Agent HQ brings multi-vendor agents into Copilot with a mission-control view across GitHub, VS Code, mobile, and the CLI, driven from issues and pull requests. As of August 2026 it is in public preview for paid Copilot subscribers. Fit: the most team-legible option for organizations standardized on GitHub, and it works from any OS because it lives in GitHub. It is a delegation surface, not a live parallel-workspace environment like Conductor.

6. Warp Oz: managed agent fleets for teams

Warp Oz (warp.dev/oz), launched in February 2026, is an orchestration platform for fleets of cloud agents, built with teams in mind; it added support for multiple agent harnesses in May 2026. Fit: worth a look if you want a managed, team-oriented take on running many agents at once and are comfortable with execution in Warp's cloud.

How to choose

On Windows or Linux and want Conductor's experience today: AQ if you want it in the browser with a team, vibe-kanban if you want free and local (our guide to Conductor alternatives for Windows and Linux goes deeper on this case). Need teammates in the same session without an invite-only gate: AQ is among the few tools built around that. Want agents on infrastructure you control rather than a vendor's sandbox pool: AQ (your own VM) or OpenHands (self-hosted). Want open source: vibe-kanban for a local board, OpenHands for a platform. Already paying Cursor or GitHub: their bundled agents are the path of least resistance. And if you are a solo Mac developer with none of these constraints, the honest advice is that Conductor remains a strong default, and Conductor Cloud on its Pro plan now covers the close-your-laptop case too; join the Windows waitlist only if you can afford to wait.