Paradev Review: Run a Team of AI Coding Agents in Parallel for Free

On November 4, 2026, Meta bought Conductor, the Mac app many teams used to run several AI coding agents at once. The same day, Conductor stopped new sign-ups and downloads. Its cloud workspaces go read-only on November 13 and shut down on November 20, when the company starts deleting cloud data. Conductor users have sixteen days from the announcement to move.

Nine days before that deal, the startup formerly known as Superset renamed itself Paradev and announced an $11.5 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures. Paradev builds the same kind of tool Conductor did: a desktop workspace that runs CLI coding agents in parallel, each in its own Git worktree. The difference is the price and the license. The local app is free, the code is MIT-licensed, and the company says running agents on your own machine will never require payment.

This review covers what Paradev does, what it costs, how it compares with Conductor, and where it still falls short. Every fact below comes from Paradev's own documentation and pricing page, its GitHub repository, and reporting on the Conductor deal, checked on November 9, 2026. No hands-on testing was done for this article; where a claim comes from the company, the text says so.

What Paradev is

Paradev is not a coding agent. It is the workspace around the agents. You bring your own subscriptions and API keys for tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or OpenCode, and Paradev gives each task its own Git worktree, branch, and terminal, so several agents can work on the same repository at the same time without overwriting each other's files.

That worktree is the whole idea. A single agent CLI runs one session in one terminal, and an editor is built around one checkout. Paradev adds the layer above: one worktree per task, a sidebar that shows which agent is working, done, or waiting on you, and a review flow that keeps every change in one place. The repository lists more than 20 built-in agent presets, including Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor Agent, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Devin, Kimi Code, Droid, Amp, Antigravity, Grok, Hermes, Muse Code, Kiro, Mastra Code, Mistral Vibe, and Pi, and it says any other CLI agent works without configuration.

Paradev does not proxy model calls. Your agents talk to their own providers, and those providers bill you separately. That matters for the price math later: Paradev's free tier is free, but the agents inside it are not. A Claude Code Pro subscription is $20 a month, for example, and that bill stays with Anthropic.

The project has momentum. The repository at github.com/ParadevAI/Paradev had 16,099 stars when checked on November 9, 2026. The company says hundreds of thousands of developers in 180 countries have used it, including teams at one in eight Fortune 500 companies. Both figures are the company's own, with no independent count behind them, so treat them as a signal of attention rather than proof of adoption.

How it works: from install to your first parallel session

Getting started takes three steps, according to the official documentation. First, download the desktop app for macOS, either Apple Silicon or Intel, or the experimental Linux AppImage. Windows is not available yet. The only required install is Git; the gh command-line tool is optional and enables the pull request workflows. Second, add a repository from your computer or clone one. Third, create a workspace, pick a CLI agent, and describe a small change. The agent works in its own worktree while you watch from the sidebar.

The review flow is where Paradev earns its keep. A Changes pane lets you inspect, comment on, and edit an agent's patch, then commit and push when it is ready. A pull request pane shows checks and review threads and can merge. An in-app browser previews each workspace's dev server, with ports detected per workspace, so every worktree gets its own preview. A Design Mode lets you click an element in that preview and send the change to an agent with element context. Pages let an agent publish a report that teammates can comment on, with a watching agent revising it at the same link.

Two details stand out for daily use. The built-in terminal has tabs, infinite splits, and presets, and sessions survive restarts. Pressing Command-I opens a rich prompt editor with multiline editing and @-file mentions. The sidebar also tracks every agent with working indicators, completion chimes, and dock badges when one needs your attention, which is the difference between running three agents and actually noticing when one finishes.

Beyond the desktop, Paradev ships a command-line tool, a TypeScript SDK, and an MCP server, so agents and scripts can create and manage workspaces themselves. The CLI is still called superset from the old name, with paradev as an alias, and it installs with a shell script or Homebrew. Automations can run agent sessions on a schedule or when something happens, such as reviewing a pull request when you are asked, triaging a new Sentry issue, or drafting the weekly changelog. Remote access connects another machine so you can reach its workspaces from anywhere, and an iPhone and iPad app lets you check agents and review diffs away from your desk. Both need the Pro plan, and the mobile app needs iOS 26 or iPadOS 26 or later.

What Paradev costs

Paradev's pricing page, read live on November 9, 2026, lists five tiers. The local app is free for one user, with local workspaces, the desktop app, and the CLI, and no credit card is required. Pro is $20 per user a month, or $16 a month billed yearly at $192 per user a year. Team is $60 per user a month, or $54 billed yearly at $648 per user a year. Ultra is $200 per user a month, billed monthly. Enterprise is priced on request.

Currency conversions use November 9, 2026 market rates of $1 = £0.7471 and $1 = CA$1.4066, and are approximations. Paradev bills in US dollars, so the sterling and Canadian figures will move with the exchange rate.

The fine print is where the real cost sits. First, Paradev charges for the workspace, not the intelligence. Every agent you run still bills through its own subscription or API key, so a team running Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode side by side pays Paradev plus each of those providers. Second, the yearly discount is real but modest: Pro saves $48 a user a year, or 20 percent, and Team saves $72 a user a year. Third, cloud workspaces are metered. Team includes 150 hours per seat each month and Ultra includes 500 hours, and the pricing page does not publish what an hour beyond that costs, so a team that leaves agents running around the clock should ask before committing. Fourth, cloud workspaces are still in beta, which means the paid tier's headline feature is not yet a finished product.

The free tier's promise is written into the repository itself: "The desktop app is free forever. Running agents in parallel on your own machine will never require payment. Anything we charge for will be an optional service on top." That is a company statement, not a contract, but it is backed by the license, which is the next section.

Paradev vs Conductor: the migration, side by side

Conductor and Paradev solve the same problem in the same way: several CLI coding agents, each in its own workspace, with review and pull requests in the same app. The difference now is that one of them is shutting down. Meta acquired Conductor, and the company announced on November 4, 2026 that it is joining Meta. Axios reported the deal first, founder and CEO Charlie Holtz confirmed it the same day, and Meta confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch. Financial terms were not disclosed.

For Conductor users, the deadline is the story. Conductor's own announcement gives two ways to preserve cloud data before November 20: transfer individual workspaces to a Mac from inside the app, or download an account archive from Settings, then Account, then Export data. TechRepublic, reporting on the announcement, advises doing it before the November 13 read-only date, so there is time to fix problems, and warns that the company has not specified every file the export archive includes, so the download should not be assumed to reproduce a whole working environment. Active subscribers will receive refunds, though Conductor has not published amounts or a schedule.

Paradev is the most direct replacement on paper: it covers Conductor's four agents and adds more presets besides, it costs less than Conductor's Pro tier did, and its local app is free rather than tied to a closing cloud. The trade is that Paradev's cloud workspaces are still in beta, while Conductor's cloud was a finished product, and Paradev has no Windows build, so a team on Windows has nowhere to go with either tool. Orca, the other free option in this space, is worth a look for teams that want a fully open-source environment, though this review did not test it. Paradev's own comparison page, checked November 5, 2026, describes Orca as free and open source with more than 25 named agents.

The license question, settled

Some directories still describe Paradev as source-available under the Elastic License 2.0, which is not an open-source license. That description is stale. The live repository tells a different story: the LICENSE.md file is the full MIT License, copyright 2025-2026 Superset Inc., the README says "The whole app is in this repo under the MIT License: use it, fork it, modify it, self-host it, and redistribute it," and GitHub's own metadata lists the license as MIT. Paradev's website footer says the same.

The confusion has a history. Coverage of the February 2026 launch described Superset as source-available under the Elastic License 2.0, and several directories never updated their entries after the project relicensed. Anyone evaluating Paradev for a team should rely on the live repository, not the directory listings, and the live repository is unambiguous. The practical result is that a team can fork Paradev, self-host it, and keep running it even if the company changes direction, which is exactly the guarantee Conductor's users wish they had.

What to watch before you switch

First, Windows is missing. The desktop app runs on macOS, with an experimental Linux AppImage, and the company has not announced a Windows date. A Windows-only team cannot use Paradev at all.

Second, worktrees are not sandboxes. The README states this plainly: "Worktrees separate working files; they do not sandbox processes or prevent merge conflicts." Two agents in two worktrees can still step on each other through shared services, databases, or ports, and merging their branches is still your job. The isolation is about files, not about everything else.

Third, scale is a goal, not a current fact. The company says Paradev today runs five to seven concurrent agents comfortably, and its stated goal is 100 agents by the end of 2026. Nobody has published an independent test of dozens of agents running at once, so treat the hundred-agent figure as an ambition. The same applies to the company's user counts: hundreds of thousands of developers and one in eight Fortune 500 companies are the company's own figures, repeated in its blog and its investor's note, with no independent audit behind them.

Fourth, the paid tiers carry the features that make Paradev more than a launcher. Remote access, automations, and the mobile app all sit behind Pro, and cloud workspaces sit behind Team. The free tier is a complete local workspace, but a team that wants agents running on a schedule, or checked from a phone, pays $20 per user a month for it. And the agent bills never go away: Paradev's price is on top of whatever Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode costs, not instead of it.

Fifth, the company is small and young. Three founders, all previously CTOs at Y Combinator companies, built the first version at a hackathon in November 2025 and joined Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch. The $11.5 million seed, led by Union Square Ventures with Y Combinator, BoxGroup, 468 Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Orange Collective, Palm Drive Capital, Pioneer Fund, Broom Ventures, and Transpose Platform taking part, was announced on October 26, 2026, and a Securities and Exchange Commission filing lists $11,500,089 sold to 35 investors. That funding buys time, but a seed-stage startup is still a seed-stage startup, and the MIT license is the real insurance policy if it ever changes course.

Who should use it, and who should wait

Paradev fits three groups. Solo developers on a Mac who already pay for one or two coding agents get the parallel workflow for nothing, which is the clearest win in this review. Teams on Macs that run several agents across a shared codebase get the review flow, the automations, and the cloud workspaces, at $20 to $60 per user a month, which undercuts the $50 Conductor Pro tier it replaces. And Conductor users facing the November 20 shutdown get a migration path that keeps their agents, since Paradev supports Conductor's four agents and adds more.

Three groups should wait. Windows developers have no build to download. Teams that need a finished, supported cloud workspace today should note that Paradev's cloud is still in beta. And anyone who has not yet picked a coding agent should start there instead: our roundup of the 7 best AI coding agents in 2026 compares prices and limits, because Paradev organizes agents, it does not replace choosing one. Developers who want the agent to see and operate the whole desktop rather than the terminal may also prefer Vercel Agent-Desktop, which we covered separately.

Is Paradev really free?

Yes, for local use. The desktop app, local workspaces, and CLI cost $0 for one user, with no credit card required, and the company states the local app is free forever. You still pay separately for the coding agents themselves, such as Claude Code or Codex, through their own subscriptions or API keys.

Does Paradev replace Conductor?

For most Conductor users, yes. Paradev supports the same four agents Conductor did, plus at least sixteen more presets, and its local app is free. Conductor users should still export their cloud data before November 20, 2026, because Paradev cannot import Conductor's cloud workspaces, and Conductor Cloud becomes read-only on November 13.

Which coding agents work with Paradev?

More than 20 CLI agents have built-in presets, including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Cursor Agent, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Devin, Kimi Code, and Droid. Any other command-line agent works without configuration, according to the repository.

Is there a Windows version?

Not yet. Paradev runs on macOS, Apple Silicon and Intel, with an experimental Linux AppImage. The company has not announced a Windows release date.

Does Paradev run the AI models itself?

No. Paradev never proxies model calls. Your agents connect to their own providers with your own subscriptions or API keys, and those providers bill you separately.

What does Paradev Pro add?

Pro costs $20 per user a month, or $16 billed yearly, and adds remote access, automations, Linear and Slack integrations, and the iPhone and iPad app. Team, at $60 or $54 billed yearly, adds cloud workspaces with 150 hours per seat each month.

Paradev arrives at the right moment, with the right price, and the right license. Conductor's shutndown leaves a gap on November 20, and Paradev fills it with a free local app, an MIT-licensed codebase, and support for more agents than the tool it replaces. The limits are real: no Windows build, cloud workspaces still in beta, and agent bills on top. But for a Mac developer who already pays for a coding agent, the workspace that organizes them now costs nothing, and the code behind it belongs to everyone.

Sources

• Paradev GitHub repository (README, LICENSE.md, supported agents, pricing of record)
• Paradev pricing page (read live November 9, 2026)
• Paradev blog: "Superset is now Paradev. Also, we raised an $11.5M seed" (October 26, 2026)
• Union Square Ventures: "Paradev" (October 26, 2026)
• TechRepublic: "Meta Buys Conductor: How to Export Your Projects Before Nov. 20"
• Dealroom: "Paradev raises $11.5M seed to run coding agents by the hundreds" (October 27, 2026)
• Paradev: "Paradev vs Orca vs Conductor (2026)" (facts checked November 5, 2026)
• RateMorph: USD to GBP, November 9, 2026 (1 USD = 0.7471 GBP)
• RateMorph: USD to CAD, November 9, 2026 (1 USD = 1.4066 CAD)