Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Sourcegraph VS grep.app

Compare Sourcegraph VS grep.app and see what are their differences

Sourcegraph logo Sourcegraph

Sourcegraph is a free, self-hosted code search and intelligence server that helps developers find, review, understand, and debug code. Use it with any Git code host for teams from 1 to 10,000+.

grep.app logo grep.app

grep.app searches code from over a half million public repositories on GitHub.
  • Sourcegraph Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06
  • grep.app Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-18

Sourcegraph features and specs

  • Code Search
    Sourcegraph offers powerful, fast, and precise code search across large codebases, which helps developers quickly find references, definitions, or implementations.
  • Cross-Repository Search
    Allows searching across multiple repositories within the same interface, enhancing discoverability and productivity.
  • Integrations
    Sourcegraph integrates with popular code hosting platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and more, providing a seamless experience.
  • Code Intelligence
    Supports advanced code intelligence features like hover tooltips, go-to-definition, and find-references, making code navigation easier.
  • Extensibility
    Developers can extend Sourcegraph's functionality with custom extensions, adapting it to their specific needs.
  • Data Privacy
    Sourcegraph can be self-hosted, giving organizations control over their code and data privacy.
  • Multi-Language Support
    Supports a wide range of programming languages and continuously adds more, catering to diverse development environments.

Possible disadvantages of Sourcegraph

  • Complex Setup
    Setting up Sourcegraph, especially self-hosted versions, can be complicated and time-consuming, requiring a good understanding of DevOps practices.
  • Resource Intensive
    Sourcegraph can be resource-heavy, necessitating significant computational power and memory, especially for large codebases.
  • Cost
    While there is a free tier, advanced features and self-hosted options can be expensive for small teams or individual developers.
  • Learning Curve
    The myriad of features and customizations can result in a steep learning curve for new users, potentially slowing down initial adoption.
  • Limited Offline Support
    While Sourcegraph provides robust online features, its functionality is limited when offline, which can impact productivity in environments with restricted internet access.
  • Dependency on Code Hosts
    Sourcegraph's heavy reliance on integrations with external code hosting platforms can introduce friction if there are changes or issues with those services.

grep.app features and specs

  • Fast Search
    grep.app provides a rapid search experience across a wide array of repositories, leveraging optimized algorithms for quick text retrieval.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform offers a clean and intuitive interface, making it easy for users to navigate and perform searches efficiently even if they are new to the tool.
  • Extensive Repository Support
    grep.app supports searching through a vast number of code repositories, offering developers a comprehensive tool for finding code snippets and relevant information.
  • Regular Updates
    The service frequently updates its repository index, ensuring that users have access to the most recent and relevant code data.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, grep.app allows users to contribute to its development, fostering a community-driven approach to improving the tool.

Possible disadvantages of grep.app

  • Limited Scope
    grep.app focuses primarily on code repositories, which may not be useful for individuals seeking to search non-code content or specific file types outside its scope.
  • Internet Dependency
    The platform requires an internet connection to access its search features, which might be a limitation for users in areas with unstable internet connectivity.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any online search tool, there may be concerns regarding the privacy of search queries and how they are stored or used by the service.
  • Learning Curve
    While generally user-friendly, some users may experience a learning curve in leveraging advanced search functions without prior experience or documentation.
  • Resource Intensity
    Executing large or complex searches can be resource-intensive, potentially slowing down performance for larger queries or datasets.

Sourcegraph videos

Code review with IDE powers: Sourcegraph Chrome extension

More videos:

  • Review - Better code reviews on GitHub with the Sourcegraph browser extension
  • Review - Sourcegraph's new GitLab native integration

grep.app videos

Identify malware authors using grep.app

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Sourcegraph and grep.app)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Git
65 65%
35% 35
Code Collaboration
68 68%
32% 32
SCM
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Sourcegraph and grep.app. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Sourcegraph should be more popular than grep.app. It has been mentiond 33 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Sourcegraph mentions (33)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)
    Sourcegraph | San Francisco / Remote | Full-Time | SWE, Database Platform Eng, Forward Deployed Eng, Solutions Eng, Dev Advocate (all roles write code) | https://sourcegraph.com Sourcegraph is how enterprises industrialize software development with AI. We accelerate and automate how software is built in the world's most important companies, including 7/10 top software companies by market cap and 4/6 top US banks.... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Quickly build UI components with AI
    Cody by Sourcegraph can transform how you build UI components, from basic buttons to complex, dynamic systems. It handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on crafting good UI/UX designs. Whether you’re customising components or managing complex UI systems, Cody provides the tools to make the process faster and more efficient. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • 22 Unique Developer Resources You Should Explore
    URL: https://sourcegraph.com What it does: A universal code search tool for navigating large codebases. Why it's great: Quickly locate what you need in vast repositories — ideal for collaboration! - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Copilot vs. Cody: All you need to know
    What is Sourcegraph Cody? Cody, introduced by Sourcegraph, is an AI-powered coding assistant designed to use advanced search and codebase context to help you understand, write, and fix code faster. Launched in 2023, Cody aims to provide deeper context and more accurate code suggestions, particularly for complex and large-scale projects. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: Is there a good reason many product docs and blogs lack homepage links?
    I've seem to come across this a lot. I'll be assessing some product or service and follow a link to the documentation page, only to find there is no obvious way to get back to the actual product page to check pricing, etc. The same thing when I end up on a product's blog. Here's an example: https://sourcegraph.com/docs Where's the link back to https://sourcegraph.com/ ? Is this intentional? - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

grep.app mentions (15)

  • Ask HN: Little or even unknown website that you like to use?
    Https://grep.app - To search repos for patterns. I usually use it when I'm using an obscure or badly documented library. https://unicode.scarfboy.com/ - Unicode stuff. There are a lot of small Unicode tool sites. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Nginx Has Moved to GitHub
    There are some alternatives like https://grep.app or https://sourcegraph.com/search if you want fast live search, but at the end of the day these are generally expensive services to provide, especially for free anonymous users, so you should probably at least accept that service providers can and do change things like this. You can also run something like your own copy of Zoekt and then ingest repositories on... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Sourcegraph Went Dark
    Https://grep.app/ is another good one. Not sure how many repos they index though. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Code Finder – The ultimate search engine for GitHub repositories
    Https://grep.app/ is similar and seems to return results, but I have not compared it to native GitHub search. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Ask HN: Grep.app Alternative?
    Https://grep.app/ has served me well for the last couple of years finding snippets for random APIs. But recently I found that certain strings from open-source projects suddenly yield no results. For example: VaultServiceTimeout from https://github.com/rajanadar/VaultSharp has no results for https://grep.app/search?q=VaultServiceTimeout. Is there some alternative service for this task that is up-to-date? - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Sourcegraph and grep.app, you can also consider the following products

OpenGrok - OpenGrok is a fast and usable source code search and cross reference engine.

Atlassian Fisheye - With FishEye you can search code, visualize and report on activity and find for commits, files, revisions, or teammates across SVN, Git, Mercurial, CVS and Perforce.

searchcode - A source code search engine

bloop - Code-search engine for developers

GrepCode - GrepCode.com is a code search engine built by developers for developers to search and browse open...

codespell.ai - AI-Powered Code Completion for Faster SDLC