SourceHut

What Is SourceHut?

GitHub centralised open-source collaboration in a way that made contributing to software dramatically easier — a pull request, a comment, a fork, all from a web browser. It also made open-source contribution dependent on a single US company, created by a US company (Microsoft since 2018), operating under US jurisdiction, hosting the majority of the world's open-source code in a private infrastructure that developers do not own or control. The convenience was real. So were the dependencies.

Drew DeVault started SourceHut (sr.ht) in 2018 with a different set of priorities. The code review workflow should be based on email — the decentralised, archivable, plain-text protocol that predates the web and requires no specific platform. The web interface should work without JavaScript. The entire platform should be free software that anyone can self-host. Pricing should be transparent and subscription-based, not advertising-based or venture-funded.

DeVault, originally American, has since relocated to the Netherlands and registered the SourceHut operation under Dutch law (KvK 84165251, Hoorn, Netherlands). The move was deliberate: SourceHut's legal and operational home is now within the European Union, subject to GDPR, with no US entity active in the primary operational structure. A prior US Delaware LLC (SourceHut LLC) is in the process of dissolution.

The result is the most principled software forge in existence — and one of the least accessible to developers who have spent their careers on GitHub.

Key Features

Email-Driven Code Review

SourceHut's code review workflow is built on git's patch submission model: contributors prepare patches using git format-patch and submit them via git send-email to a project's mailing list on lists.sr.ht. Reviewers reply inline using standard email clients. Patch revisions are submitted as new email threads. Maintainers apply accepted patches using git am.

This workflow predates GitHub by decades. It is how the Linux kernel, Git itself, and many large open-source projects still manage contributions. It is archivable — the entire contribution history lives in email archives accessible without a SourceHut account. It is decentralised — if SourceHut disappears tomorrow, contribution histories remain in mailing list archives and local inboxes. It is portable — the skills transfer to any project using the same workflow, on any platform.

For developers trained on GitHub pull requests, the email workflow requires adjustment. sr.ht provides documentation and helper tools (including an interactive git send-email tutorial) to lower the barrier. For developers who have worked with kernel or GNU project contribution workflows, SourceHut feels immediately familiar.

Multi-OS CI with builds.sr.ht

Builds.sr.ht is SourceHut's CI platform, notable for its operating system breadth. Build images include Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Alpine, Arch Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Few managed CI platforms offer BSD build targets at all — Jenkins can be configured for it, but managed BSD CI requires specialist setup that most teams never pursue.

Build manifests are YAML files committed to the repository, specifying the OS image, packages to install, and tasks to run. They are different in format from GitHub Actions or GitLab CI — there is no drop-in compatibility — but they are straightforward and well-documented. Build minutes are included in the subscription without per-minute billing surprises.

Mercurial Hosting with hg.sr.ht

SourceHut is one of the few active forges that hosts Mercurial repositories. Bitbucket deprecated Mercurial in 2020. GitHub never supported it. SourceHut's hg.sr.ht provides Mercurial hosting with the same mailing-list-based code review workflow as git.sr.ht. For open-source projects that chose Mercurial — including several Mozilla projects and older Python ecosystem tools — SourceHut is one of very few commercial hosting options remaining.

Project Management Without Surveillance

todo.sr.ht provides issue tracking. hub.sr.ht provides project landing pages. paste.sr.ht handles code snippets. pages.sr.ht hosts static sites. These are all straightforward tools that do their jobs without collecting analytics, serving advertisements, or requiring JavaScript. The philosophy is that a forge should be infrastructure: reliable, transparent, privacy-respecting, and out of the way.

Pricing

SourceHut's pricing changed structure in January 2026 when it formalised its base rates in Euro, reflecting the shift of primary business operations to the Netherlands. Current pricing starts at €4/month for the Standard tier with full access to all sr.ht services — git, Mercurial, CI, mailing lists, issue tracking, and pages. The €8/month Standard Plus tier adds more build minutes and storage. The €12/month Enhanced tier provides maximum build concurrency.

There is no free tier for project hosting. This is a deliberate design decision: SourceHut is entirely subscriber-funded with no advertising, no data resale, and no venture capital. The operator publishes financial reports. The pricing model is transparent.

Financial aid is available on request. SourceHut's stated policy is that no one should be priced out of using the service, and hundreds of users have received aid. The reduced rate starts at €2/month for users who genuinely cannot afford the standard price.

EU Compliance & Privacy

SourceHut's EU positioning is among the most substantive of any software forge. The operative entity, registered in Hoorn, Netherlands (KvK 84165251), is subject to Dutch law and EU GDPR. Infrastructure is EU-hosted. There is no US operational entity — the former US Delaware LLC is being dissolved.

The platform collects no advertising data, serves no third-party JavaScript, and runs no analytics. The web interface's JavaScript-free design is not merely a technical preference — it eliminates the entire category of browser-side tracking that most web platforms embed by default. SourceHut does not know which pages you visit beyond what the server logs record for operational purposes.

The complete SourceHut source code is published under AGPL v3 and MIT licences. Every component — billing, build orchestration, git hosting, mailing list management — can be audited. The operator, Drew DeVault, publishes regular blog updates and financial reports, making SourceHut's operational transparency unusual among SaaS providers.

Who It's Best For

SourceHut is best suited for developers and projects that are deeply committed to free software principles, comfortable with email-based workflows, and willing to invest in learning a different contribution model in exchange for an EU-based, privacy-respecting, fully auditable forge.

Open-source maintainers who want infrastructure that cannot be acquired by a large corporation, subjected to US law enforcement requests, or modified to serve advertising goals will find SourceHut's Dutch registration and subscriber-funded model structurally aligned with those priorities.

Projects that need Mercurial hosting or BSD CI build targets have almost no other managed options.

If the priority is principled free software, EU jurisdiction, and an email-driven workflow, choose SourceHut. If the priority is a large ecosystem of integrations, drag-and-drop CI configuration, and a UI familiar to casual contributors, choose GitLab or stay on GitHub. If the priority is Mercurial hosting or BSD CI build targets, SourceHut is one of the only managed options left.

The Verdict

SourceHut is the forge for developers who have decided that GitHub's centralisation, Microsoft's ownership, and the general SaaS model for open-source infrastructure are problems worth solving rather than accepting. It is principled to the point of being demanding: the email workflow, the no-free-tier policy, and the JavaScript-free interface all reflect convictions about how software should be built and distributed. The Dutch operation provides an EU legal anchor that is genuinely rare in the forge market. At €4/month, it is affordable infrastructure for anyone who wants their code hosted on a fully auditable, FOSS-committed, EU-based platform. The adoption cost is real, but for the right project and the right team, SourceHut is precisely what it claims to be.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to pay to contribute to someone else's project on SourceHut?

No. A payment is only required if you want to host your own projects (repositories, mailing lists, CI jobs) on SourceHut. Reading repositories, submitting patches via email, browsing issues, and commenting on todo.sr.ht all work without a paid account. Signing up for a free account lets you interact with projects — only creating and hosting your own projects requires a subscription.

How does git send-email work for code review?

git send-email is a git subcommand that sends commits as formatted email patches to a mailing list. The workflow is: write your changes, run git format-patch to generate patch files, configure git send-email with your email credentials, and run git send-email to submit them to the project's lists.sr.ht address. Reviewers reply inline using their email client, providing feedback on specific lines. You iterate by sending revised patch series. SourceHut provides an interactive tutorial at git-send-email.io to teach the workflow step by step.

Can I mirror my GitHub repository on SourceHut?

Yes. SourceHut supports repository mirroring from GitHub, GitLab, and any other git remote. You can configure a repository to pull from an upstream GitHub URL automatically, keeping the SourceHut copy current. This lets teams use SourceHut for CI, mailing lists, or hosting while maintaining a GitHub presence for discoverability and pull request contributions from users not on SourceHut.

Is SourceHut suitable for private commercial projects?

Yes. SourceHut supports private repositories that are not publicly visible. Private repositories count against your storage quota under your subscription tier. The platform does not distinguish between open-source and commercial use cases in its terms of service or pricing. However, teams evaluating SourceHut for commercial use should note that the ecosystem tooling (GitHub integrations, project management add-ons) is vastly smaller than GitHub's, and the email-based contribution workflow requires internal adoption effort.

What happened to the US SourceHut LLC entity?

SourceHut originally operated as a US Delaware LLC (SourceHut LLC), as Drew DeVault was based in the US. When he relocated to the Netherlands, he registered the Dutch entity (KvK 84165251) and began transitioning operations there. The US LLC is in the process of dissolution. The Dutch entity is the active operational and legal structure. Contractually, services are provided by the Dutch entity. For EU customers and contributors, this transition means SourceHut is now fully under EU jurisdiction with no US entity in the primary operational chain.