Conductor alternatives for Windows, Linux, and teams

Updated September 12, 2026 · first published July 10, 2026 · by the AQ team

The best Conductor alternatives as of September 2026, depending on why you are looking: AQ if you want Conductor's parallel-agent model in a browser, multiplayer, on any OS, with execution in your own cloud; Orca if you want a free, open source desktop app that actually runs on Windows and Linux; vibe-kanban if you want a free local board and accept community maintenance; OpenHands if the requirement is open source plus a real self-hosted deployment story; Cursor cloud agents or GitHub Copilot Agent HQ if you would rather get background agents bundled with a subscription you already pay for. The reason people search at all: Conductor is a Mac desktop app (Windows is a waitlist and no Linux version is announced as of September 2026), its cloud workspaces are driven from the Mac app, an iPhone app, or the API rather than a browser, and its company-wide Team plan is still invite-only. The full field, honestly compared, is 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. It is moving fast and increasingly pitching the cloud: its homepage now leads with "run a team of coding agents in the cloud," and Conductor Cloud (launched July 30, 2026) runs workspaces in isolated hosted sandboxes with your repos and dependencies pre-installed, so agents keep working after you close the app. September 2026 releases kept that pace: version 0.84.0 (September 2) added experimental remote desktop control to cloud workspaces, and 0.85.0 (September 9) refreshed the bundled Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Cursor agent runtimes. Pricing as of September 2026: the local mode is free; the Pro plan is $50 per month and includes cloud workspaces, the Conductor API, the iPhone app, and multiplayer for a small group (Conductor's pricing page lists up to five people); the Team plan is $60 per user per month, adds company-wide multiplayer with centralized billing and an admin portal, and is still invite-only. 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: as of September 2026 Windows developers are still on a waitlist, no Linux version is announced, and there is no browser version, so even Conductor Cloud is managed from the Mac app, the iPhone app, or the API. Collaboration has opened up a notch (Pro now covers a small group), but company-wide multiplayer remains gated behind 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 a plan feature; 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 usage on your own subscriptions. 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. Orca: free, open source, and actually on Windows and Linux

Orca (onorca.dev, the stablyai/orca project on GitHub) is the closest thing to Conductor's local experience that runs everywhere: a free, MIT-licensed desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that orchestrates a fleet of coding agents in parallel git worktrees, working with 30+ terminal agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and more) on the subscriptions you already pay for. As of September 2026 there is no Orca account and no Orca pricing, and a mobile companion app lets you monitor your own agents from a phone. The shape to understand before choosing it: Orca is single-player by design (a teammate cannot join your session; showing someone means screen-sharing), and agents run on the machine where the app runs unless you assemble a remote setup yourself over SSH or its headless server mode. Fit: the free cross-platform pick for a solo developer who wants Conductor's parallel-worktree model today on Windows or Linux. If you outgrow the single-player shape, our Orca alternatives guide covers the next step.

3. 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: a free cross-platform pick for a solo developer who prefers a board over a cockpit and is comfortable with that risk profile. More detail in our vibe-kanban alternatives guide.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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, Orca if you want a free open source desktop cockpit, vibe-kanban if you want a minimal local board (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: Orca for a desktop cockpit, 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 both the close-your-laptop case and a small group; join the Windows waitlist only if you can afford to wait.