Open Source Java Profilers

Question

What can you guys recommend to use with Java?

Only requirement is it should be open source, or has not too expensive academic licence .

When you say open source do you mean free? They have different meanings. Is your question about _inexpensive profilers? — Robert Munteanu, Jun 04 '09 at 12:41

score 64 · Accepted Answer · edited May 28 '17 at 18:51

64

The VisualVM which comes with jdk6 has a basic profiler inside it. VisualVM is provided with the jdk, so if you have the jdk6 installed, you likely have it installed as well.

https://visualvm.github.io/

edited May 28 '17 at 18:51

herrtim

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answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:16

Chi

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The VisualVM profiler is a stand-alone version of the one in NetBeans. It is a VERY good start. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jun 04 '09 at 06:06
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Definitely download the most updated version on: https://visualvm.dev.java.net/ . Also: this IS the profiler NetBeans uses. – Peterdk Apr 04 '10 at 19:30
I've used `VisualVM` before with success, but it was crashing for me while trying to profile a Tomcat app. This worked for me: https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler – Lambart Jan 29 '19 at 22:19
honest-profiler doesn't work on JVM 11 and the author is not actively working on the project atm. https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler/issues/255 – i336_ Mar 28 '21 at 04:14

score 23 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 04 '16 at 15:46

23

you've got a list here (listing them below, in-case link gets broken)

JMemProf

JMP

DrMem

JTreeProfiler

NetBeans Profiler

JAMon API

JBoss Profiler

MessAdmin

InfraRED

TomcatProbe

Java Interactive Profiler (JIP)

Profiler4j

Stopwatch

JMeasurement

DJProf

TIJmp

Allmon

Appspy

EurekaJ

japex

OKTECH Profiler

Perf4j

edited Dec 04 '16 at 15:46

Bhushan

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answered Jun 09 '09 at 21:50

LB40

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You can add this to the list: https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler – Lambart Jan 29 '19 at 22:18

Adeel Ansari · Answer 3 · 2017-08-25T06:33:28.203

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Ah. Netbeans Profiler, developer.com's "Product of the Year" winner, in 2009.

edited Aug 25 '17 at 06:33

answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:20

Adeel Ansari

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score 12 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 06 '15 at 10:14

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Java has a basic built in profiler called HProf. I find it useful to compare the results it provides with results from more fully features profilers.

edited Feb 06 '15 at 10:14

tangens

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answered Jun 04 '09 at 06:20

Peter Lawrey

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I've used HPROF for years - and while it may not be pretty, it's helped me solve countless memory and performance issues. – Gandalf Jun 04 '09 at 15:38
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HPROF often finds different points to optimise. I often use it after YourKit no longer gives me obvious points to optimise. – Peter Lawrey Jun 05 '09 at 19:47
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Removed since jdk 9. http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/240 – user2418306 Nov 26 '19 at 20:07

score 7 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 31 '17 at 13:01

The open-source tool jvmtop does include a basic console profiler. Example output:

 JvmTop 0.7.0 alpha - 15:16:34,  amd64,  8 cpus, Linux 2.6.32-27, load avg 0.41
 http://code.google.com/p/jvmtop

 Profiling PID 24015: org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap

  36.16% (    57.57s) hudson.model.AbstractBuild.calcChangeSet()
  30.36% (    48.33s) hudson.scm.SubversionChangeLogParser.parse()
   7.14% (    11.37s) org.kohsuke.stapler.jelly.JellyClassTearOff.parseScript()
   6.25% (     9.95s) net.sf.json.JSONObject.write()
   3.13% (     4.98s) ....kohsuke.stapler.jelly.CustomTagLibrary.loadJellyScri()

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:09

4

Eclipse TPTP

Here's an article about Java Application Profiling using TPTP and here's a tutorial Profiling J2SE 5.0 based applications using Eclipse TPTP.

answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:09

lothar

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I've never been able to set TPTP up. Perhaps I'm too dumb to use it. – quant_dev Nov 01 '09 at 19:00
@quant_dev: I have had the same problem but somehow accidently managed to have it set up suddenly (eclipse restarted or whatever?). But when I used it it turned out to be almost useless, was incredibly slow and resource hungry to the point where I had kill eclipse. Some of the more usefull views that were mentioned in several references I found online also don't seem to exist anymore in the current realease that works with eclipse 3.5. So at the moment it's basically just a huge BLOB of uselessness. – x4u Jan 17 '10 at 17:11
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Eclipse TPTP looks like a mature product but is extremely slow. I cannot understand why... – Roalt Apr 20 '10 at 12:50
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Unfortunately TPTP has now had its final release (v4.7.2). It has been archived and is no longer part of the Eclipse simultaneous release. – joelittlejohn Jun 23 '11 at 22:14

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 03 '19 at 18:18

Consider cutting-edge https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/async-profiler

This project is a low overhead sampling profiler for Java that does not suffer from Safepoint bias problem. It features HotSpot-specific APIs to collect stack traces and to track memory allocations. The profiler works with OpenJDK, Oracle JDK and other Java runtimes based on HotSpot JVM.

It's also built-in into IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/cpu-profiler.html.

There is also similar https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler.

The comparison between async-profiler and honest-profiler: https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/async-profiler/issues/77

Nice illustrated article on async-profiler: https://hackernoon.com/profiling-java-applications-with-async-profiler-049s2790 — Vadzim, Sep 04 '19 at 06:02

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 06:56

If you are looking for a no-frills, easy to use open source profiler, you may want to take a look at Jip (Java Interactive Profiler). It's published under a BSD license. I found it to be quite useful for small programs. At least, the results it gives are way more easy to understand than hprofs output.

Kire Haglin · Answer 9 · 2018-07-10T14:07:01.160

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Java Mission Control, it's free to use for development and it integrates with Eclipse. It has very low overhead (<1%) since it piggybacks on the data the JVM is gathering anyway.

It's very easy to use and it can also give a lot information you typically won't find in other profiling tools, e.g. latency profiling, online memory inspection, detailed gc statistics

edited Jul 10 '18 at 14:07

answered Jun 11 '09 at 11:08

Kire Haglin

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score 2 · Answer 10 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

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This is quick, dirty, and very effective: just take a few thread dumps, or pause the program several times, and look at the stack traces.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Community

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answered Jun 09 '09 at 21:45

Mike Dunlavey

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 07 '15 at 12:16

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JVM Monitor is a Java profiler integrated with Eclipse to monitor CPU, threads and memory usage of Java applications.

If further deep analysis is needed, you may use other tools (e.g. TPTP, Memory Analyzer) as a next step.

answered Sep 07 '15 at 12:16

Barun

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:20

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Netbeans IDE includes a free profiler.

Also, if I remember correctly, the academic license for JProfiler is (relatively) inexpensive.

answered Jun 04 '09 at 04:20

Paul Morie

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OP did ask for "not too expensive academic licence". A single academic licence for JProfiler is US$199 – masher Jun 04 '09 at 04:43
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He asked for something that was open source or had an inexpensive academic license. In my opinion, US$199 is fairly inexpensive for a tool that costs $499 for a normal license. – Paul Morie Jun 04 '09 at 04:50

Open Source Java Profilers

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