Hound vs Sourcebot
Hound
github.com
Sourcebot
sourcebot.devSide by side
| Figure | Hound | Sourcebot |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 3 |
| Spec score · Code Search Tools | 7.7 (#16) | 8.0 (#8) |
| Deployment | Hound can be built from source or run from the project's GitHub Container Registry Docker image. | Sourcebot is designed to be self-hosted and ships as a single Docker container for deployment on a user's infrastructure, on-premises or in the cloud. |
| Purpose | Hound is an extremely fast source code search engine with a React frontend and Go backend that maintains an index for each repository. | Sourcebot is a self-hosted tool that helps humans and agents search, navigate, and understand complex enterprise codebases. |
| Support | The README describes platform support and setup guidance but does not specify a support service. | Basic includes community support, Pro includes onboarding support, and Enterprise includes a dedicated support engineer and SLAs. |
Plans
In their own words
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.
Sourcebot
Sourcebot is a self-hosted tool for searching, navigating, and understanding complex enterprise codebases. Search covers repositories and branches, with regular expressions, filters, boolean logic, and suggestions. Symbol navigation includes go to definition and find references. Its MCP server gives coding agents tools to search code, read files, and resolve symbols across an organization's repositories.
Supported code hosts include GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Gerrit, and Gitea, both cloud and self-managed. Ask Sourcebot connectors communicate over MCP and use the connected user's permission boundaries; documented examples include Linear and Jira. Ask Sourcebot requires at least one language model provider configured, with documented providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex, and Mistral. Sourcebot runs as a single Docker container on customer infrastructure, on-premises or in the cloud. The company says code, indexes, queries, and AI inputs and outputs remain within the customer's environment. Basic is free; Pro costs $20 a month billed per user and includes a 14-day free trial.