Conductor alternatives: the cloud shuts down November 20 after the Meta deal, so pick where your agents run next

The right Conductor alternatives depend on where your agents ran. Meta is buying Conductor, and Conductor Cloud goes read-only on November 13 and shuts down on November 20, while the local Mac app gets fixes until early 2027. Cloud users should export now; local users can switch on their own schedule.

By the end of this post you will know exactly what stops working and when, how to get your cloud workspaces out, and which replacement fits the way you work: a free, open-source desktop app that keeps parallel agents in git worktrees on your machine, or a hosted service that runs each agent in its own cloud VM.

Is Conductor shutting down? Only the cloud, for now

Conductor is not disappearing overnight. Its changelog entry of November 4 sets three dates that matter:

• November 13: Conductor Cloud becomes read-only.
• November 20: Conductor Cloud shuts down. TechCrunch reports that user cloud data will be deleted after that.
• Early 2027: the local Mac app keeps getting new models and critical bug fixes until then.

The changelog does not say what happens to the local app after early 2027. Treat "until early 2027" as the end of support, not a promise that it keeps working after that. If you only ever ran local workspaces, nothing breaks this month. You can switch on your own schedule.

What happens to Conductor after Meta bought it

Meta confirmed the deal to TechCrunch but gave no price or terms. Founder and CEO Charlie Holtz wrote that he looks forward to working with Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, and Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs, and promised "something new" by early next year, according to TechCrunch.

Meta already has a coding agent, Muse Code, which TechCrunch says launched in August 2026. TechCrunch's report does not say whether Conductor's team or product will fold into it. Until Meta says more, plan as if the Conductor you use today has a fixed end date.

Export your Conductor cloud workspaces before November 13

Do this first, while the cloud still accepts changes. The changelog gives two routes:

1. To keep working on a cloud workspace, right-click it and choose Transfer to local. That moves the workspace and its chats to your Mac.
2. To keep a copy of everything, go to Settings → Account → Export data.
3. Push any branch you care about to your git remote. A replacement tool will start from your repository, not from Conductor's workspace.
4. If something fails, Conductor's changelog points you to support@conductor.build.

After November 13 the cloud is read-only, so finish any running agent work before then. After November 20 there is nothing to recover.

Conductor alternatives at a glance

Conductor did two jobs. Its Mac app ran Claude Code, Codex and Cursor agents side by side, each in an isolated workspace that Conductor builds with git worktrees, so agents never edit the same files. Conductor Cloud ran the same agents in isolated microVMs so they kept going with your laptop closed. Pick the replacement for the job you actually used.

Prices and plans as of November 6, 2026, from each vendor's own site. Upfynd lists 355 AI coding tools and 504 AI agent products as of November 6, 2026, if you want to look further.

Open source Conductor alternatives that keep agents on your Mac

If you used Conductor locally, you want the same loop: start an agent in a fresh worktree, watch several at once, review the diff, merge. Four free apps cover it, and all of them drive the agent CLIs you already pay for.

Orca: the closest match, on every desktop OS

Orca describes itself as an agent IDE that runs "Claude Code, Codex, and any other coding agent in parallel, each in its own worktree." Its site says it is free and open source under MIT, runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and supports 27 agents. It also has iOS and Android companion apps that notify you when an agent needs input, and its feature list covers remote servers and SSH hosts.

Skip Orca if you want a vendor to run the machines for you. It has no hosted cloud of its own.

Paradev (formerly Superset): local by default, cloud if you pay for it

Superset renamed itself Paradev and, per its site banner, raised an $11.5M seed round. Its pricing page gives a free tier with the desktop app, local workspaces and the CLI for one user. Pro is $20 per user a month ($16 billed yearly) and adds remote access, mobile and Linear and Slack integrations. Each agent gets its own git worktree and branch, and repos and agent sessions stay on your machine.

Paradev is the only desktop app here that publishes a price for its own hosted cloud workspaces. The Team plan, at $60 per user a month, adds cloud workspaces with 150 cloud hours per seat a month pooled across the team. Those workspaces are labeled beta, so the catch is obvious: moving from one young cloud to another. There is no Windows app yet.

Emdash: worktrees plus your own remote boxes

Emdash is a YC W26 company that calls itself a free, open-source agentic development environment. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux and says it works with 25+ coding agents. Each task gets its own git worktree with its branch, terminal, conversation and review state. It can also connect over SSH to "your dev server, cloud VM, or GPU box" and run agents there with the same isolation.

That SSH option is the cheapest way to replace Conductor Cloud's "keep running when the laptop closes" behavior: rent one VM, point Emdash at it, and you own the data.

T3 Code and cmux: lighter tools for people who live in a terminal

T3 Code is an MIT-licensed control plane for Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, OpenCode and others. It is free, uses your own subscriptions, and has iOS and Android apps. Its site says every agent thread writes to its own branch, but it does not mention worktrees, so check how it isolates files before running several agents on one repo.

cmux is a free, GPL-licensed native macOS terminal built on Ghostty, and any agent that runs in a terminal works in it. It shows each workspace's branch, ports and notifications in a sidebar. Its site does not say it creates worktrees for you, so you would manage them yourself. Choose it if you want a better terminal, not a Conductor clone.

Cloud alternatives to Conductor for Claude Code and Cursor

If Conductor Cloud was the point, the big vendors already sell the same thing, billed against a plan you may already have.

Claude Code cloud sessions. Anthropic's cloud sessions run each task in an isolated, Anthropic-managed VM. They are available on Pro, Max, Ultra and Team plans and some Enterprise seats, and count toward your plan's usage with no separate charge for the VM. Each claude --cloud command in the terminal starts its own session, so several run in parallel, and the --teleport flag pulls a finished session back into your terminal. The catch: cloning and pull requests need GitHub, and parallel sessions use up your rate limits faster.

Cursor cloud agents. Cursor's docs say cloud agents run "in isolated VMs in the cloud with full development environments," and you can run as many as you want in parallel. They need a Premium or higher, Teams or Enterprise plan, not Free or Plus, and they draw on your plan's usage at the selected model's rate. Skip this if your team is not already on Cursor.

Self-host parallel coding agents so no acquisition can switch them off

If the real lesson here is that a hosted tool can vanish with about two weeks' notice, Coder runs workspaces on infrastructure you own. Its free Community edition says you can "Run Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other AI coding agents inside ephemeral workspaces," with up to 5 active Coder Agents. The catch is that you now run the platform yourself.

What is the best alternative to Conductor?

There is no single answer, but there is a short one for each case:

• You used the local app: try Orca first. It is the nearest like-for-like and adds Windows and Linux. Emdash is the close second, with remote SSH machines front and center.
• You used Conductor Cloud on Claude Code: move to Claude Code cloud sessions if you are on a plan that includes them. You avoid another third-party cloud.
• You want a Conductor-style app with a hosted cloud: Paradev's Team plan is the closest, with the beta caveat.
• You want no vendor in the loop: Emdash over SSH for one person, Coder for a team.

Whatever you choose, export first. Then try a replacement on one repository this week, while Conductor still works, so you can compare the two side by side. For new tools in this space as they launch, check the Upfynd launches board, and see Conductor's own listing for similar products.