Chromium vs Hound
Chromium
chromium.orgHound
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Chromium | Hound |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 0 |
| Spec score · Code Search Tools | 8.1 (#5) | 7.7 (#16) |
| License | Google released the Chromium source code under a permissive BSD license. | The repository provides Hound under the MIT License. |
| Platform support | The project documents builds for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android; the download page lists Chromium builds for Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromiumOS. | The README says Hound is tested on macOS and CentOS and should work on any Unix-like system; Windows is not supported, though it may compile and run. |
| Support | The project directs developers who need help to the chromium-dev Google Group or IRC channel and says these are not support channels for Chrome itself. | The README describes platform support and setup guidance but does not specify a support service. |
In their own words
Chromium
Chromium is a free, open-source browser project and codebase for developers who build, study, and contribute to it. The project publishes source code, design and architecture documents, testing information, and contribution guidance. It develops the V8 JavaScript engine and Blink rendering engine. Its documented security approach includes sandboxing, Safe Browsing, defense in depth, and safe defaults, with a security team reviewing architecture and helping address bugs. Chromium source code is released under a permissive BSD license, and Google uses the project as the basis for Google Chrome. Build instructions cover Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android; download archives list Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromiumOS. Builds are supplied on a best-effort basis from arbitrary revisions, may differ from user-facing Chrome releases, do not auto-update, and do not include symbols. Site Isolation can increase memory use and has stated Android limitations.
Hound
Hound is a free source code search engine that indexes repositories and offers a web interface and a minimal API. Its Go backend maintains a current index for each repository, while its static React frontend provides the web UI. Search uses regular-expression matching with a trigram index. Hound supports Git, Mercurial, SVN, Bazaar, and local repositories; private repositories can be indexed from local directories or reached through file or SSH-style URLs. By default, it checks configured repository URLs for updates every 30 seconds, with an interval that can be changed per repository. It can be built from source or run from the project's Docker image, and the web UI defaults to localhost:6080. Plugins are available for Sublime Text, Vim, Emacs, and Visual Studio Code. Hound is tested on macOS and CentOS and is expected to work on Unix-like systems, but Windows is not supported. It does not support TLS itself; the README suggests running it behind Apache or nginx. Hound uses the MIT license, and the latest listed release is v0.7.1, published May 3, 2023.