Verdict: choose Augment Code when the goal is to give coding agents persistent semantic context across IDE, CLI, Slack, remote execution, and compatible MCP clients. Choose Sourcegraph when enterprise code search, code navigation, code graph relationships, self-hosted or single-tenant deployment, and organization-wide code intelligence are the larger program. Both can answer questions about large codebases. Their centers of gravity differ: Augment begins with agent context, while Sourcegraph begins with searchable code infrastructure.
- Both products treat context as infrastructure, which makes this a closer comparison than autocomplete feature lists suggest.
- Augment is agent-centered through Context Engine, Auggie, remote agents, Cosmos, Slack, SDKs, and MCP.
- Sourcegraph is search-centered through indexed code, structural navigation, Code Graph, enterprise search, and Cody.
- Sourcegraph has the clearer self-hosted story and publicly lists Enterprise pricing from $16,000.
- Augment has the lower public team entry at $100 per month for up to 50 seats, with usage terms that still require modeling.
- Retrieval quality is repository-specific. Test citations, permission trimming, freshness, and implementation outcomes.
Verdict first
Augment Code wins when a team primarily wants better context for coding agents. Context Engine is designed to select relevant code and connected engineering knowledge, then serve it through Augment's VS Code and JetBrains extensions, Auggie CLI, Slack, remote agents, Cosmos, MCP, and SDKs. The product can improve an engineer's current workflow without requiring the organization to adopt a general code search portal first.
Sourcegraph wins when the organization needs a searchable and governable map of all its code, with Cody as one consumer. Sourcegraph indexes repositories for literal and structural search, supports navigation and Code Graph relationships, and offers enterprise deployment choices that include self-hosted and single-tenant arrangements. Cody uses Sourcegraph Search and Code Graph context alongside keyword methods. That foundation serves discovery, investigation, security, migration, and code intelligence use cases beyond conversational coding.
| Decision | Augment Code | Sourcegraph Cody |
|---|---|---|
| Primary product | Coding agents backed by Context Engine | Enterprise code search and intelligence with Cody |
| Best fit | Teams buying agent retrieval and execution | Organizations buying code search infrastructure |
| Retrieval | Semantic index across code and connected sources | Keyword, Sourcegraph Search, and Code Graph context |
| Surfaces | VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, Slack, Cosmos, MCP, SDK | Sourcegraph web, VS Code, JetBrains, experimental Visual Studio, CLI |
| Automation | Auggie, remote agents, and Cosmos workflows | Cody plus Sourcegraph APIs, MCP, and enterprise workflows |
| Deployment | Business cloud offering and custom Enterprise options | Cloud, single-tenant, and self-hosted enterprise choices |
| Public entry | $100 monthly Business plan for up to 50 seats | Enterprise starts at $16,000 on the pricing page |
| Clear limitation | Search platform breadth is narrower | Enterprise commitment can be excessive for a small team |
Small teams seeking an agent assistant should test Augment first. A regulated enterprise consolidating code from hundreds of repositories should test Sourcegraph first. If both requirements are real, compare the products as infrastructure layers rather than forcing an exclusive choice. The same company may use Sourcegraph for universal search and code intelligence while a smaller group uses Augment for agent-oriented context.
Criteria table
| Criterion | What to test | Likely edge |
|---|---|---|
| Known-answer retrieval | Correct files, symbols, and cited evidence | Repository dependent |
| Structural relationships | Definitions, references, implementations, and dependencies | Sourcegraph |
| Agent workflow | Plan, edit, test, remote execution, and handoff | Augment Code |
| Search breadth | Queries across every authorized repository | Sourcegraph |
| Context portability | MCP, SDK, connector, IDE, CLI, and Slack use | Augment Code |
| Deployment control | Self-hosting, single tenancy, residency, and upgrade policy | Sourcegraph |
| JetBrains | Daily search, chat, and agent behavior | Both |
| Economics | Total annual cost per active user and accepted change | Scale dependent |
Build two test sets. The retrieval set should contain 30 questions whose correct files and symbols are known. Include renamed APIs, generated code, inactive branches, deleted paths, duplicated implementations, and repositories with restricted access. The execution set should contain changes that cross package or service boundaries. Grade cited evidence, false positives, missing callers, tests, review corrections, and elapsed time.
Search relevance and agent usefulness are related but separate. Sourcegraph may find every reference while a coding agent produces a poor patch. Augment may supply a compact semantic result while missing an exact structural relationship that a search query exposes. Record both retrieval accuracy and merged-change quality. A single satisfaction score hides the failure mode that engineers must fix.
How the context systems differ
Augment describes Context Engine as a live understanding of a codebase across repositories, services, history, and connected knowledge. It selects relevant context for a prompt and exposes that retrieval through Context Services. MCP lets compatible agents request code context, while SDKs and connectors support custom workflows. This is a practical route when a team wants retrieval to follow the agent between an IDE, terminal, Slack, and remote execution.
Sourcegraph starts with indexed, queryable code. Cody can gather context through keyword search, Sourcegraph Search, and Code Graph. Search offers exact and pattern-driven investigation across repositories. Code Graph supplies relationships such as definitions, references, implementations, and dependencies where supported. This gives an engineer both an assistant and direct access to the underlying discovery tools, which is valuable when an answer must be audited manually.
Semantic retrieval can locate conceptually related code even when names differ. Structural and literal search can prove that a symbol appears in a precise set of places. Mature workflows need both behaviors. Ask whether each product can show why a result appeared, link to an exact revision, respect branch choice, refresh after pushes, exclude generated or vendored code, and trim results before model input according to the user's permissions.
Cross-repository context requires an ownership model. Decide which repositories belong in the index, who approves connectors, how archived projects are labeled, and how access changes propagate. Test a user who can see service A but cannot see service B. Ask a question whose answer exists only in B and verify that no title, snippet, symbol, or derived summary leaks. Repeat the test after revocation.
Agents, search, and developer workflow
Augment gives the agent workflow more product surface. Its IDE agents can plan and edit with Context Engine, Auggie works from the terminal, Slack supports codebase questions, remote agents run away from the local editor, and Cosmos describes coordination across cloud sandboxes, self-hosted virtual machines, and laptops. Subagents can divide work in Auggie. This breadth suits teams that want one vendor to connect retrieval and execution.
Cody provides chat and editing in supported clients, including Sourcegraph Enterprise, VS Code, JetBrains, the web application, and CLI paths documented by Sourcegraph. Visual Studio support is marked experimental. Its advantage appears when the same organization already uses Sourcegraph for cross-repository search and navigation. Engineers can verify an answer with ordinary search rather than treating the assistant as the only window into the index.
Sourcegraph's wider platform can be too much for a team whose real requirement is a strong agent in two editors. Enterprise rollout involves repository syncing, indexing, identity, search policy, upgrades, and administration. Augment's lower team entry and coding-focused setup may reach value faster. The inverse also holds: adding an agent-only product can duplicate infrastructure when Sourcegraph already indexes the entire estate and supplies the required context.
Evaluate interruption cost. Measure time from question to cited answer, time from task to passing branch, number of tool changes, and review effort. Some developers prefer transparent search followed by manual editing. Others prefer an agent that retrieves and acts within one flow. The team should optimize completed, correct work rather than conformity to one interaction style.
Scale, deployment, and economics
Sourcegraph publishes Enterprise pricing starting at $16,000 and lists self-hosted and single-tenant deployment alongside enterprise search, Cody, MCP, API, and CLI capabilities. The actual quote will depend on users, code scale, deployment, support, and purchased features. The minimum makes sense only when search and code intelligence serve enough teams and use cases to justify platform ownership.
Augment publishes a Business plan at $100 per month for up to 50 seats, including a $100 usage allowance shared across language models, Context Engine, and compute. Enterprise pricing is custom. This creates a much lower nominal entry, though usage, connectors, remote environments, onboarding, security review, and index administration remain real costs. Ask for load assumptions against repository size and agent volume.
Scale claims should be evaluated on four axes: repository volume, index freshness, query quality, and permission correctness. Augment has published an engineering account of retrieval over a 100 million line codebase, including vendor-reported memory and latency improvements. Sourcegraph has years of product work around universal code search and code graph infrastructure. Neither history predicts performance on a buyer's generated sources, binary artifacts, monorepo tooling, branch churn, or access model.
Calculate annual total cost. Include license, metered model or compute usage, hosting, storage, indexing, upgrades, incident response, identity integration, connector maintenance, developer onboarding, and reviewer time. Then assign benefits to search, navigation, agent execution, security work, and migrations. Sourcegraph may look costly if Cody receives all credit. Its broader search platform must be measured across the jobs it actually serves.
When to pick each
| Choose Augment Code when | Choose Sourcegraph Cody when |
|---|---|
| Coding-agent context is the main purchase | Universal code search is the main purchase |
| IDE, CLI, Slack, and remote agents should share context | Search, navigation, Code Graph, API, and Cody should share an index |
| A lower team entry is important | Enterprise platform budget and administrators are available |
| Context should be exposed through MCP and SDKs | Self-hosted or single-tenant deployment is required |
| Cosmos execution matches the operating model | Existing Sourcegraph adoption lowers rollout cost |
| Semantic retrieval wins the repository benchmark | Exact and structural search wins the repository benchmark |
Choose Augment if agent productivity is the direct objective and Context Engine produces materially better changes in the pilot. Choose Sourcegraph if code discovery, navigation, auditability, and platform control justify the investment even before Cody is counted. A company with Sourcegraph already deployed should test its existing context path before adding a second full-code index.
Use both only with explicit boundaries. Define which index answers which query, how identities map, which system is authoritative for search links, and how duplicate ingestion is monitored. Two context platforms can improve coverage. They can also double administrative work and create conflicting answers from different revisions.
Migration notes
There is no direct index migration. Embeddings, semantic relationships, ranking behavior, chat history, feedback, connectors, search indexes, and code graph state are product-specific. Move source repositories and reviewed configuration, then allow the destination to build its own index. Preserve required audit exports and saved searches before access ends.
Inventory repositories and identities
Record hosts, organizations, branches, archived projects, access groups, exclusions, connectors, and service accounts.
Export human-readable assets
Preserve saved searches, repository rules, code ownership, runbooks, MCP definitions, and approved prompts in reviewed source or documentation.
Build the destination index
Start with restricted test repositories, inspect freshness and revision links, then add scale in controlled batches.
Run retrieval parity tests
Repeat known-answer queries with users from several permission groups and compare citations, false positives, latency, and leaks.
Run an overlap period
Keep both systems available through one release cycle, publish the cutover date, and retain a rollback path for critical search workflows.
Moving from Sourcegraph to Augment also requires a replacement decision for direct code search, structural queries, navigation, APIs, and any operational workflows built on them. Moving from Augment to Sourcegraph requires a replacement decision for Auggie, Slack, remote agent execution, Cosmos, and context clients. A feature name match is insufficient. Test the exact workflow and named owner.
Where Continuum fits
Continuum operates at the agent workbench layer. It runs supported coding agents in isolated git worktrees and keeps chat, plans, diffs, pull requests, terminals, and artifacts attached to each session. It can coordinate Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, Grok, and OpenCode across Mac, web, iPhone, and beta Windows and Linux desktops.
It has no proprietary semantic index, universal code search service, code graph, or Sourcegraph and Augment provider integration. It therefore cannot replace the central capability in this comparison. A team can retain its chosen context platform and use Continuum only when several supported agents need branch isolation, review, and mobile control. Validate any MCP connection in the underlying agent itself.
Questions people ask
Augment is stronger as a focused coding-agent and context purchase. Sourcegraph is stronger when enterprise code search, Code Graph, navigation, deployment control, and organization-wide code intelligence are the larger requirements.
Augment Context Engine retrieves semantically relevant code and connected knowledge for agents and clients. Sourcegraph Code Graph provides precise code relationships such as definitions, references, implementations, and dependencies where supported. Teams often need semantic and structural methods.
Yes. Sourcegraph is designed to index and search code across repositories, subject to configured access and scope. Cody can use Sourcegraph Search and Code Graph context in Sourcegraph Enterprise.
Yes. Cross-repository and service context is a central Context Engine claim. Buyers should test indexing scope, branch freshness, permission trimming, citations, and known cross-repository questions on their own estate.
Sourcegraph publicly lists self-hosted and single-tenant enterprise deployment options. Augment describes agents running on self-hosted virtual machines through Cosmos, though buyers should verify which context and control-plane components remain hosted.
Both document JetBrains support. Test the exact search, navigation, chat, agent, indexing, and authentication functions because extension capabilities differ even when the editor name matches.
Augment lists Business at $100 monthly for up to 50 seats plus usage terms. Sourcegraph lists Enterprise starting at $16,000. Obtain current quotes and compare annual platform, usage, hosting, administration, and review costs.
No direct index transfer is documented. Reconnect source repositories, reproduce permissions and exclusions, rebuild the destination index, and run retrieval tests before removing the old service.
Sources
Every figure above was read from these pages on August 2026. Vendors reprice without notice; if you find a stale number, tell us.