# Nsight Systems

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Nsight Systems and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free NVIDIA profiler people use for GPU work and for CPU-side and Python GIL analysis.

## Why people recommend it

- Profiles non-GPU code too (2 comments): "Ive used nsight systems for non GPU stuff to visualize off CPU time equally with on CPU time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46753899)) "I especially like the python GIL profiler of nsys." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202478))
- Praised as great and simple (3 comments): "On nsys, agreed it's great, but we wanted something that could run continuously instead of an offline analysis tool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925149)) "nsight systems makes this pretty simple to do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47924566)) "nsys and nvtx are awesome." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46195967))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [perf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/perf.md): 13 recommend
- [Java Flight Recorder](https://hackerapproved.com/p/java-flight-recorder.md): 10 recommend
- [Instruments](https://hackerapproved.com/p/instruments.md): 9 recommend
- [Perfetto](https://hackerapproved.com/p/perfetto.md): 8 recommend
- [Python 3.15 sampling profiler](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python-3-15-sampling-profiler.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Nsight Systems", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nsight-systems/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).