Quickstart

Get up and running with Sourcegraph. Choose between a managed Cloud instance or a self-hosted deployment.

Sourcegraph is available as a fully managed cloud service or as a self-hosted deployment on your own infrastructure. This guide walks you through both paths.

Sourcegraph Cloud

Managed, single-tenant instance hosted by Sourcegraph. No infrastructure required.

Self-hosted

Deploy on your own infrastructure using Docker Compose or Kubernetes.

Sourcegraph Cloud

Sourcegraph Cloud gives you a dedicated, single-tenant instance that Sourcegraph hosts, manages, and upgrades on your behalf. It’s the fastest way to get your team up and running.

Sign up and request an instance

1. Request a Cloud instance

   Visit sourcegraph.com and start a free trial. Sourcegraph will provision a dedicated instance for your organization at a URL like your-org.sourcegraph.com.

2. Sign in as site admin

   After your instance is provisioned, sign in with the admin credentials provided during setup. The first user to sign in becomes the site administrator.

3. Connect your code hosts

   Navigate to Site Admin → Manage code hosts → Add code host and connect your repositories. Sourcegraph supports:

   GitHub

   Connect GitHub.com or GitHub Enterprise. You can authenticate using a GitHub App (recommended) or a personal access token.

   1. Go to Site Admin → Manage code hosts → Add code host
   2. Select GitHub
   3. Follow the prompts to install the Sourcegraph GitHub App into your organization, or enter a personal access token with repo and read:org scopes
   4. Configure which repositories to sync (all repos, selected repos, or repos matching a pattern)

   See the GitHub code host docs for full configuration options.

   GitLab

   Connect GitLab.com or a self-managed GitLab instance.

   1. Go to Site Admin → Manage code hosts → Add code host
   2. Select GitLab
   3. Enter your GitLab instance URL and a personal access token with read_api and read_repository scopes
   4. Configure which projects to sync

   See the GitLab code host docs for full configuration options.

   Bitbucket

   Connect Bitbucket Cloud or Bitbucket Server / Bitbucket Data Center.

   1. Go to Site Admin → Manage code hosts → Add code host
   2. Select Bitbucket Cloud or Bitbucket Server
   3. Provide your workspace credentials or server URL and authentication token
   4. Configure which repositories to sync

   See the admin config docs for full configuration options.

   You can connect multiple code hosts to the same Sourcegraph instance. Sourcegraph will search across all of them simultaneously.

4. Wait for repositories to sync

   After connecting a code host, Sourcegraph begins cloning and indexing your repositories. You can monitor sync progress at Site Admin → Repositories. Indexing time varies based on the number and size of repositories.

5. Run your first search

   Navigate to the Sourcegraph home page and enter a search query in the search box. Some examples to try:

   # Find all uses of a function across all repos
   myCriticalFunction
   
   # Regex search across a specific repo
   repo:my-org/my-repo func\w+Error
   
   # Search for a pattern in a specific language
   lang:go fmt.Errorf\(.*%w
   
   # Search commit diffs for changes to a function
   type:diff myCriticalFunction
   

   See the Code Search queries reference for the full query syntax.

6. Invite your team

   Navigate to Site Admin → Users and auth → Users → + Create user to add team members, or configure SSO to allow self-service sign-in.

   For SSO configuration, see the authentication docs.

What’s next for Cloud users

Cloud instance setup

Full guide to configuring your Cloud instance: SSO, email, and team management.

Take the tour

See Sourcegraph features demonstrated through real-world developer workflows.

Try Cody AI

Set up Cody in your editor and run your first AI-assisted interaction.

Try Deep Search

Ask natural language questions about your codebase and get sourced answers.

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Self-hosted

Self-hosted deployment gives you full control over your Sourcegraph environment. You run Sourcegraph on your own infrastructure using Docker Compose (for smaller teams) or Kubernetes (for larger deployments).

Self-hosted deployment requires infrastructure setup and ongoing maintenance. If you want to get started quickly without managing infrastructure, use Sourcegraph Cloud.

The self-hosted deployment documentation covers:

• System requirements and prerequisites
• Docker Compose and Kubernetes deployment options
• Configuring code hosts, authentication, and storage
• Upgrading and scaling your instance

Self-hosted deployment guide

Complete instructions for deploying Sourcegraph on your own infrastructure.

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Explore Sourcegraph features

Once you have a running instance with repositories connected, explore what Sourcegraph can do:

Code Search

Search across all your repos with regex, structural, and diff search.

Cody AI

AI assistant with full context over your codebase.

Code Navigation

IDE-like go-to-definition and find-references across all repos.

Batch Changes

Automate large-scale changes across many repositories.

Code Insights

Track codebase trends and migration progress over time.

Deep Search

Agentic AI search that answers complex questions about your code.