Conductor vs Dapr
Conductor
conductor-oss.orgDapr
dapr.ioSide by side
| Figure | Conductor | Dapr |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $1,199/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 4 |
| Spec score · Process Orchestration Software | 7.8 (#15) | 9.2 (#1) |
| Deployment | The project documents self-hosting with Docker and says Conductor runs anywhere Docker runs. | Dapr applications run on Kubernetes or self-hosted on virtual or physical machines across cloud and edge environments. |
| Integrations | The integration guide describes event-driven orchestration, MCP tool integration, and Agent2Agent integration with independently deployed agents. | Official integrations include AWS, Azure, KEDA, GitHub Actions, the Dapr Kubernetes Operator, Kratix Marketplace, and Argo CD. |
| Support | The project directs users to its public Slack community to ask questions and share resources. | Diagrid pricing lists portal, email and Slack support, unlimited support calls, onboarding support and tiered response times for commercial offerings. |
Plans
Dapr
- Cloud FreeFree
- Dedicated Cloud$1,199 a month
- BYOC$1,599 a month
- Enterprise ServerPriced on request
In their own words
Conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 open-source platform for building and orchestrating AI agents and workflows on a durable execution engine. It persists workflow and task state, allowing recovery after worker or infrastructure failure, with retries, timeouts, pause, resume, and termination controls. Workflows can use nested loops, dynamic branches, sub-workflows, and thousands of tasks. Native AI features include LLM tasks, MCP tool discovery and calls, human approval steps, and vector workflows for retrieval-augmented generation. Agents from LangGraph, CrewAI, Google ADK, and the OpenAI SDK can be used. SDKs are listed for Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET, Go, Ruby, and Rust. Conductor documents event-driven and Agent2Agent integrations. It can run anywhere Docker runs, using Redis by default and Elasticsearch for indexing, with replaceable storage and queue backends. Plans include free self-hosted OSS and hosted Developer Edition options.
Dapr
Dapr is an open-source runtime that provides APIs for durable workflows and distributed application services. Its workflows handle long-running stateful processes with retries, timers, human approvals, and sagas. Dapr also supports AI agents using checkpointed plans to recover after failures. Service invocation offers HTTP or gRPC communication with discovery, tracing, and error handling; additional APIs cover pub/sub, state, actors, jobs, secrets, configuration, bindings, distributed locks, and cryptography. Dapr runs as a sidecar process or container, keeping its runtime code out of application code. It can run on Kubernetes or self-hosted on Windows, Linux, or macOS machines, including physical and virtual machines across cloud and edge environments. Security includes mTLS encryption in transit, access policies, and automatic certificate rotation. Stable SDKs are available for.NET, Python, Java, Go, PHP, and JavaScript. Dapr is free and open source. Separate paid options include Dedicated Cloud starting at $1,199 a month and BYOC starting at $1,599 a month; both list a first 14 days free.