Orca IDE vs Conductor.build
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Orca IDE
This app mirrors your desktop terminal sessions, including AI agent interactions, directly to your iPhone. It provides full keyboard input and multi-terminal support for seamless remote coding management. All processing remains on your desktop, ensuring your data stays secure.
- Live desktop terminal mirror
- AI agent session management
- Full keyboard input
- Multi-worktree, multi-terminal support
- Phone-fit zoom and smart keyboard
- Background command execution
- End-to-end encrypted pairing
Read full descriptionHide full description
Orca Mobile is the companion app for Orca, the open-source agentic coding workspace for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Pair your iPhone to your desktop in seconds and pick up a terminal session from the couch, the kitchen, or across the office. WHAT IT DOES • Live mirror of your desktop terminal, including running AI agent sessions (Claude Code, Codex, custom CLIs). • Full keyboard input — type, tab-complete, Ctrl-C, scroll back, all from the phone. • Multi-worktree, multi-terminal: jump between projects with a tap. • Phone-fit zoom and a smart on-screen keyboard with quick Ctrl/Alt accessory keys and shortcuts. • Background long-running commands and get a notification when a TUI goes idle (e.g. when Claude finishes thinking). HOW IT WORKS Orca Mobile is a thin client. Nothing runs on your phone except the viewer. Your code, your shells, your AI agents — all of that stays on your desktop. The phone shows you what's happening and forwards your keystrokes back over an encrypted local-network connection. Pairing is end-to-end encrypted. Your desktop generates a one-time keypair and shows a QR code; you scan it from the app. After that, all traffic between phone and desktop is sealed with that pair's keys. PRIVACY • No analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no third-party SDKs of any kind in the iOS app. • Pairing tokens and your preference list live in the app's own sandbox. The app's traffic to your desktop is end-to-end encrypted on your local network only. • The Orca desktop app collects anonymized usage metrics per the policy at https://www.onorca.dev/privacy. The mobile app itself does not. • Open source: every line is auditable at https://github.com/stablyai/orca. REQUIREMENTS • An iPhone (iOS 16+) on the same Wi-Fi as your desktop. • The Orca desktop app, free, from https://www.onorca.dev/ or https://github.com/stablyai/orca/releases.
Conductor.build
Manage a team of cloud-based coding agents directly from your Mac or phone. This tool allows for seamless control and operation of your development team from anywhere.
- Cloud-based coding agents
- Remote team management
- Mac and phone control
- Developer tool
Read full descriptionHide full description
Conductor lets you run a team of coding agents in the cloud and control them from your mac or phone.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Conductor.build at 5.0 against Orca IDE's 4.6. Conductor.build also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 83%). Orca IDE's advantage is ratings volume (41 vs 6) and chart position (#13 vs #96). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Conductor.build holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Orca IDE has 41 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 83% of Orca IDE's written reviews are positive against 100% of Conductor.build's.
Orca IDE ships an update every 3 days, Conductor.build every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 19, 2026 and October 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Orca IDE | Conductor.build |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (41 ratings) | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 83.3% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 41 — better | 6 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 6 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #13 — better | #96 |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 42 MB | 74 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lovecast LLC | Melty, Inc. |
Customer experience
Orca IDE
Conductor.build
In-app purchases
Orca IDE
No in-app purchases
Conductor.build
No in-app purchases








