⚡Stack Radar

Linters & Formatters · Reviewed 27 Oct 2026

Hound

Automated code review tool for GitHub pull requests.

from $29 · free tier · houndci.com ↗

Paid against free › Linters & Formatters › Hound

Hound at a glance
2.5KEstimated total trafficModeled monthly visits5Ranking keywordsPublic search sample88/100Technical health3 pages checked0Referring domainsLive backlink summary

Overview

01

Summary

The useful answer before the supporting detail.

Hound is an automated code review tool that integrates with GitHub to comment on code quality and style issues in pull requests S1. It is used by development teams to enforce consistent coding style and reduce manual review burden S1. The main practical value is saving time and improving codebase maintainability through automated style checks S1.

02

Product identity and positioning

Name, category, positioning, audience, and first-party claims.

  • Identity: Hound is a GitHub code review tool for automated style checking S1.
  • Core purpose: It reduces the number of decisions developers make by enforcing consistent style, keeping focus on logic S1.
  • Intended users: Development teams using GitHub for pull request workflows S1.
  • Product scope: A single web application that reviews and comments on pull requests S1.
  • Positioning: Hound integrates with existing workflows to provide automated review, freeing humans for higher-level feedback S1.
  • Claimed distinction: Built by thoughtbot, its default style guides are based on years of industry use S1.
03

Use cases and audiences

Who the product serves and the jobs it is designed to handle.

AudiencePractical use case
Development teamsEnforce consistent code style across pull requests to reduce review time S1.
Teams using GitHubAutomatically comment on style issues in pull requests to maintain clean codebases S1.
Thoughtbot projectsLeverage style guides refined through years of software projects S1.

Features

09

Features and capabilities

Core functions and evidence-backed product capabilities.

CapabilityWhat it does
Automated pull request reviewComments on code quality and style issues when a GitHub pull request is opened or updated S1.
Style guide enforcementUses default style guides built on industry standards to ensure consistent code style S1.
Multi-language supportSupports linters for JavaScript, Ruby, Swift, and more S1.
Workflow integrationIntegrates with existing GitHub workflow without disrupting it S1.
Human review focusFrees developers to focus on higher-level review aspects S1.
10

Integrations and ecosystem

Connected products, exports, APIs, and workflow compatibility.

Integration or interfaceTypeWhat it enables
GitHubIntegrationReviews and comments on pull requests opened or updated in GitHub S1.
GitHub OAuthAPIAllows users to sign in with GitHub credentials S20.
Supported lintersExtension frameworkProvides style checking for multiple languages S1.

Pricing

11

Pricing and plans

Published plans, free access, trials, credits, and pricing limitations.

Plan or offerVerified price and billingIncludedLimits
Free$0Public repositoriesUnlimited public reviews S1
Chihuahua$29 per month, billed monthlyUp to 50 private reviewsPublic repositories free S1
Terrier$49 per month, billed monthlyUp to 300 private reviewsPublic repositories free S1
Labrador$99 per month, billed monthlyUp to 1,000 private reviewsPublic repositories free S1
Husky$199 per month, billed monthlyUp to 3,000 private reviewsPublic repositories free S1

Competition

12

Competitive landscape

Domains competing for the same organic search demand.

Sampled competitors

CompetitorFirst-page appearancesSampled queriesAverage positionQueries observed
github.com1025.2hound github, githound
formulae.brew.sh111githound
infoworld.com113githound
githoundexplore.com114githound
sourceforge.net115hound github
st0pp3r.blog116githound
kitploit.com118githound
youtube.com119githound

Website intelligence — Collected evidence

Customers, testimonials, and first-party review claims

Page typeEvidenceSource
reviewsAutomated code review for GitHub pull requestshttps://houndci.com/
reviewsHound comments on code quality and style issues, allowing you and your team to better review and maintain a clean codebase.https://houndci.com/
reviews Sign In with GitHubhttps://houndci.com/
reviewsCurrently supportedhttps://houndci.com/
reviewsCoffeeScripthttps://houndci.com/
reviewsRead more about Hound’s supported lintershttps://houndci.com/
reviewsWhy does code quality matter?https://houndci.com/
reviewsDefining and sticking with a consistent style helps reduce the amount of decisions that developers need to make when writing code, helping to keep their focus on logic, not semantics and formatting.https://houndci.com/
reviewsWhen every line of code is written in the same style, the whole codebase becomes easier to read, understand and de-bug. It also helps prevent areas of the codebase from being “owned” by one person’s unique style vs. the team.https://houndci.com/
reviewsA clean codebase is a reflection of a cohesive team. It gives the impression of a team working well together towards a common goal, rather than individual developers working independently.https://houndci.com/
reviewsHow it works.https://houndci.com/
reviewsHound integrates with your existing workflow by reviewing and commenting on code the moment a GitHub pull request is opened or updated.https://houndci.com/
reviewsSave time, get better reviews.https://houndci.com/
reviewsAutomated code review with Hound gives developers more time to give the kind of review that humans are best at giving.https://houndci.com/
reviewsUse our guides or configure your own.https://houndci.com/
reviewsHound’s default style guides build upon accepted industry standards and are the result of years of utilization in software projects at thoughtbot. Have your own style guide or need to modify the default? Hound provides the ability to customize your guides to best suit your team’s needs.https://houndci.com/
reviewsHound is free for public repos!https://houndci.com/
reviewsUp to 50 private reviewshttps://houndci.com/
reviewsUp to 300 private reviewshttps://houndci.com/
reviewsUp to 1,000 private reviewshttps://houndci.com/

Independent review sources discovered

No links to supported independent review platforms were discovered on the collected pages.

13

AI visibility

Measured ChatGPT and Google AI mentions with cited sources.

AI-assistant referral traffic

  • Estimated current generative-AI referral share: 1.6%

Scout traffic model did not return a separate AI-referral trend series for this domain.

Website intelligence — Collected evidence

Site-stated AI capabilities

No supporting public-page evidence was collected for this category.

These are first-party product claims, not independent measurements of AI-search visibility.

14

Marketing opportunities

Actions calculated directly from the collected evidence.

OpportunityRecommended actionEvidence
Striking-distance keywordMove “hound github” from position 4 toward the top three.Volume 110 · https://houndci.com/
Important pageStrengthen the page already earning search visibility before creating an unrelated page.https://houndci.com/ · 4 sampled keywords · best position 4
Competitor gapReview the sampled queries where github.com appears.10 first-page appearances across hound github, githound

Website intelligence — Collected evidence

Website evidence gaps

  • pricing: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • features: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • integrations: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • customers: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • changes: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • identity: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.
  • technical: no usable public page was collected; verify whether the site publishes this evidence.

Trust and proof

15

Customers, proof, and reviews

Published proof, customer signals, and review evidence.

Independent reviews

PlatformPageHow it was foundNote
StackShareHound - StackShare / StackShareGrounded web searchAutomated code review for GitHub pull requests. It comments on code quality and style issues, allowing you and your team to better review and maintain a clean codebase. ... on style so I don't have to - ✓ Easy configuration - ✓ Fast - ✓ Free for OSS - ✓
houndci.comGitHub Code Review Tool for JS, Ruby, Swift, and more - HoundGrounded web search# Automated code review for GitHub pull requests ... Hound comments on code quality and style issues, allowing you and your team to better review and maintain a clean codebase. ... - JavaScript - Ruby - Python - Swift - PHP - Sass - Go - Elixir - TypeScript - CoffeeScript - Haml - Shell ... Hound integrates with your existing workflow by reviewing and commenting on code the moment a GitHub pull request is opened or updated. ... Hound’s default style guides build upon accepted industry standards
positioniseverything.netHound: review, pricing and alternatives · Position Is EverythingGrounded web searchand its help information says the GitHub App uses a token to communicate with GitHub’s REST API. The service has a free plan for public repositories. Paid plans cover private reviews: Chihuahua costs 29.00
techbloat.comHound: facts, pricing and alternatives — TechBloatGrounded web searchHound automates code review for GitHub pull requests by commenting on code quality and style issues. ... The site describes Hound as a tool for developers and teams maintaining clean, consistent codebases.
libhunt.comHoundci/Hound Alternatives and ReviewsGrounded web search## HoundCI reviews and mentions Posts with mentions or reviews of HoundCI. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-12-06. ... under MIT License which is an OSI approved license.

Customer proof

No named customers, testimonials, or customer case studies were found.

Independent mentions

  • HoundCI - annoying? - Development - TheForeman — I'm usually not very easily annoyed. What get's me started though eventually is when things don't work properly. HoundCI is one of those things. ... My main concern is, that I get an e-mail and/or Github notification for every single comment. These can easily be ten or more e-mails. They're not grouped as other reviews. In addition, the inline comments are very distracting when reviewing a PR imho. When the issues are fixed, I'd prefer for the comments to be removed. When reviewing a PR, I usual
  • Unable to resolve path to module 'react' import/no-unresolved #1739 — # Unable to resolve path to module 'react' import/no-unresolved #1739 New issue New issue Closed cvjude opened on Aug 28, 2019 I have this problem with hound-ci while using React, I have integrated hound with eslint in my hound.yml file
  • Hound Reviews JavaScript For Style Violations — Five months ago, we announced Hound, a hosted service that reviews code for style violations and comments about them on your GitHub pull requests. Since then, over 3,000 users have signed up and used Hound to review code over 150,000 times. ... Today, we’re pleased to announce that Hound can review JavaScript code in addition to Ruby and CoffeeScript code. ... Hound is still very young. We’re eager for your feedback on the service. It is free for public repos, and $12 per month per private repo.
  • Hound — # Hound Code review for GitHub pull requests. - Login: houndci - Blog: https://houndci.com - Email: hello@houndci.com - Public repos: 1 - Followers: 13 - Verified: yes - Created: 2016-02-11T19:16:52Z ... default configurations for hound linters (3
  • Introducing Hound — We’re pleased to announce Hound, a hosted service that comments on Ruby style guide violations in your GitHub pull requests. Hound is currently free and available for public and private GitHub projects. We intend to charge in the near future to ensure Hound is sustainable, but public

External links were grounded in one live web search. Search snippets are leads, not independently scraped page content; rejected links remain available in Review evidence.

16

Company, security, and trust

Ownership, policies, security signals, and public trust evidence.

SignalFindingSource
Company and ownershipNot published on the collected pages.—
Contact and supportNot published on the collected pages.—
Legal and privacyNot published on the collected pages.—
Security and complianceNot published on the collected pages.—
Uptime and status pageNot published on the collected pages.—
Domain registered2013-12-13—
Domain expires2026-12-13—

Not found on the collected pages: company and ownership, contact and support, legal and privacy, security and compliance, uptime and status page. This only means Scout did not find it on the pages it read; it says nothing about the company itself.

17

Documentation and product updates

Help resources, product guidance, and visible changes over time.

Not established in the collected sources.

Technical

18

Technical and delivery signals

Delivery model, platforms, API, data ownership, reliability claims and release activity.

SignalFindingSource
Delivery model (cloud, self-hosted, desktop, browser extension)Hound is a web application that integrates with GitHub S1.S1
Platforms and appsAccessible via web browser; no native apps mentioned S1.S1
API and extensibility (API, SDK, webhooks, MCP, plugins)Supports GitHub OAuth for authentication S20.S20
Data ownership and exportNot published on the collected pages.—
Performance and reliability claimsNot published on the collected pages.—
Release activityNot published on the collected pages.—
19

Measured infrastructure

Domain, certificate, and hosting signals, measured directly.

SignalFinding
Domain registered2013-12-13 — Squarespace Domains II LLC
Domain expires2026-12-13
TLS certificateLet's Encrypt, valid, expires 2026-11-27
Security headersX-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy
Headers not servedHSTS, CSP
Server headerHeroku
Mail handled byaspmx.l.google.com, alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
Nameserversns2.dnsimple.com, ns3.dnsimple.com

Not measurable: wayback: rate limited by archive.org, ladder stopped after 1 probe(s). A gap here means the lookup was unavailable, not that the finding is negative.

20

Technical site audit

A bounded multi-page crawl with page-level issues and URLs.

Scout — Bounded technical crawl

  • Pages crawled: 3 of 15 maximum
  • Technical health: 88/100
  • Critical issues: 0
  • Warnings: 6
  • Notices: 3

Issues

SeverityIssueValueAffected URL
noticeMeta description length should be reviewed181https://houndci.com/
warningMissing canonical URL—https://houndci.com/
warningPage should have one primary H10https://github.com/login?client_id=Iv1.025aa97ec1c788f8&return_to=%2Flogin%2Foauth%2Fauthorize%3Fclient_id%3DIv1.025aa97ec1c788f8%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fhoundci.com%252Fauth%252Fgithub%252Fcallback%26response_type%3Dcode%26scope%3Duser%253Aemail%26state%3D381bee82566519c050900212aac23e20adbd967534b36080
noticeLow visible word count105https://github.com/login?client_id=Iv1.025aa97ec1c788f8&return_to=%2Flogin%2Foauth%2Fauthorize%3Fclient_id%3DIv1.025aa97ec1c788f8%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fhoundci.com%252Fauth%252Fgithub%252Fcallback%26response_type%3Dcode%26scope%3Duser%253Aemail%26state%3D381bee82566519c050900212aac23e20adbd967534b36080
noticeLow visible word count101https://github.com/login
warningDuplicate title in audit sample2https://github.com/login?client_id=Iv1.025aa97ec1c788f8&return_to=%2Flogin%2Foauth%2Fauthorize%3Fclient_id%3DIv1.025aa97ec1c788f8%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fhoundci.com%252Fauth%252Fgithub%252Fcallback%26response_type%3Dcode%26scope%3Duser%253Aemail%26state%3D381bee82566519c050900212aac23e20adbd967534b36080
warningDuplicate title in audit sample2https://github.com/login
warningDuplicate meta description in audit sample2https://github.com/login?client_id=Iv1.025aa97ec1c788f8&return_to=%2Flogin%2Foauth%2Fauthorize%3Fclient_id%3DIv1.025aa97ec1c788f8%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fhoundci.com%252Fauth%252Fgithub%252Fcallback%26response_type%3Dcode%26scope%3Duser%253Aemail%26state%3D381bee82566519c050900212aac23e20adbd967534b36080
warningDuplicate meta description in audit sample2https://github.com/login

Crawled pages

StatusTitleH1sWordsResponseURL
200GitHub Code Review Tool for JS, Ruby, Swift, and more - Hound1377228 mshttps://houndci.com/
200Sign in to GitHub · GitHub0105551 mshttps://github.com/login?client_id=Iv1.025aa97ec1c788f8&return_to=%2Flogin%2Foauth%2Fauthorize%3Fclient_id%3DIv1.025aa97ec1c788f8%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fhoundci.com%252Fauth%252Fgithub%252Fcallback%26response_type%3Dcode%26scope%3Duser%253Aemail%26state%3D381bee82566519c050900212aac23e20adbd967534b36080
200Sign in to GitHub · GitHub1101925 mshttps://github.com/login

This is a bounded Scout crawl. Core Web Vitals and Lighthouse scores are not claimed unless a dedicated performance audit is connected.

21

Search Console and Analytics

First-party search and behavioral data connection state.

Modeled acquisition channels

ChannelEstimated share
direct40.9%
search34.5%
search organic32.9%
search paid1.6%
social6.2%
social organic5.6%
social paid0.7%
referrals10.1%
paid referrals2.7%
mail2.7%
gen ai1.6%
affiliate1.2%
other0.0%

First-party connections

IntegrationStatusData available after connection
Google Search ConsoleNot connectedClicks, impressions, CTR, average position, queries, pages, countries, and devices
Google AnalyticsNot connectedOrganic sessions, engagement, landing pages, conversions, geography, and devices

No first-party Search Console or Analytics numbers are shown until the site owner authorizes the corresponding Google account. Scout traffic model values above are modeled estimates, not private analytics totals.

Limits and method

22

Limitations and open questions

Known constraints and missing evidence from the collected pages.

The collected pages do not mention any competitors. Evidence gaps include lack of customer testimonials, detailed feature documentation, and integration specifics beyond GitHub. Open questions remain about data handling, performance, and release cadence.

23

Sources, method, and limitations

Evidence inventory, collection method, provider use, and constraints.

This report is based on 2 collected pages from houndci.com, including the homepage and a GitHub login page. The static collector completed 2 requests, and browser rendering rendered 1 page. External proof search was enabled but only performed a web search without verification. Pricing data was sourced from an authoritative research table dated 2026-10-24. Limitations include missing documentation pages and lack of first-party customer evidence.

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