Make vs Conductor
Conductor is a plausible replacement for developer-led, self-hosted orchestration where durable execution, JSON-defined workflows, polyglot workers, and infrastructure control matter most. Make remains the better fit for teams prioritizing a visual-first automation service, its documented library of more than 3,000 app integrations, templates, and stated enterprise controls. This is not a like-for-like migration: Con
Decision guide
The practical reasons to choose either option, based on documented capabilities.
Choose Conductor if
- Engineering teams running long-lived or failure-sensitive microservice workflows that need persisted state, retries, timeouts, replay, and compensation.
- Organizations that must self-host an Apache-2.0 workflow engine on infrastructure they control.
- Developer teams defining orchestration in JSON while implementing workers in Java, Python, JavaScript, Go, C#, or other languages.
Stay with Make if
- Business users depend on Make’s visual-first, drag-and-drop workflow-building experience rather than developer-authored JSON and worker code.
- Automations rely on Make’s documented library of more than 3,000 pre-built app integrations; equivalent breadth is not documented for Conductor in the supplied sources.
- Teams require Make’s workflow template library; equivalent template coverage is not documented for Conductor here.
Deployment and operations
Conductor is Apache-2.0 licensed and self-hostable. The documented quick start requires Node.js 16+ and Java 21+; a Docker image is also available. Source builds require Docker Desktop, JDK 21+, Node.js 18+, and pnpm for the UI. Production operators are responsible for hosting and maintaining the deployment and selecting among the documented persistence backends and message brokers. Orkes is identified as the primary repository maintainer and separately offers an enterprise SaaS platform. No Git
Feature fit
What Conductor covers
- Multi-step workflow orchestration
- Visual workflow inspection and design
- API and custom-code integration
- AI-agent and MCP orchestration
- Workflow execution management
What’s different or missing
- Documented 3,000+ pre-built app catalog
- Documented workflow template library
- Documented SSO and compliance controls
- Documented Make workflow importer
Project snapshot
- GitHub stars
- 32,099
- Contributors
- 415
- Language
- Java
- Last commit
- Aug 14, 2026
- Latest release
- Aug 12, 2026
Categories: Workflow Automation
Sources and editorial review11 linked sources
Public documentation supports this comparison. Automation assists collection and classification; editorial standards and corrections remain the responsibility of Kris.
Conductor is an event driven agentic workflow engine providing durable and highly resilient execution engine for applications and AI Agents
repository description · github.comConductor is an open-source, durable workflow engine built at Netflix for orchestrating microservices, AI agents, and durable workflows at internet scale.
readme · github.comConductor provides a built-in visual UI for designing, running, and debugging workflows.
readme · github.comSelf-hosted, no lock-in ... Runs anywhere Docker or a JVM runs.
readme · github.comAI agent orchestration | 14+ native LLM providers, MCP tool calling, function calling, human-in-the-loop approval, and vector databases for RAG.
readme · github.comNo. Conductor is designed for developers who write code. While workflows can be defined in JSON, the power comes from building workers and tasks in your preferred programming language.
verdict · docs.conductor-oss.orgOrchestrate AI agents with 14+ native LLM providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, Mistral, and more), MCP tool calling, function calling, human-in-the-loop approval, and structured output.
shared feature · docs.conductor-oss.orgConductor provides a built-in visual UI for designing, running, and debugging workflows.
shared feature · github.comYes. Conductor is a fully open source workflow engine, Apache 2.0 licensed. You can self-host it on your own infrastructure with no vendor lock-in. It supports 5 persistence backends, 6 message brokers, and runs anywhere Docker runs.
deployment · docs.conductor-oss.org**Prerequisites:** [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/) v16+ and Java 21+ must be installed.
deployment · github.comYes. Orkes is the primary maintainer of this repository and offers an enterprise SaaS platform for Conductor across all major cloud providers.
deployment · docs.conductor-oss.org
