Nsight Systems
Shares rank 6 of 9 profilers by recommenders
Free NVIDIA profiler people use for GPU work and for CPU-side and Python GIL analysis.
Free NVIDIA profiler people use for GPU work and for CPU-side and Python GIL analysis.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Profiles non-GPU code too
“Ive used nsight systems for non GPU stuff to visualize off CPU time equally with on CPU time”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “I built a 2x faster lexer, then discovered I/O was the real bottleneck” “I especially like the python GIL profiler of nsys.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “AMD GPU Debugger” Praised as great and simple
“On nsys, agreed it's great, but we wanted something that could run continuously instead of an offline analysis tool.”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Utilyze, an open source GPU monitoring tool more accurate than nvtop” “nsight systems makes this pretty simple to do”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Utilyze, an open source GPU monitoring tool more accurate than nvtop” “nsys and nvtx are awesome.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “AMD GPU Debugger”
Other profilers people recommend
The four most recommended other profilers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| perf | 13 | 4 | 76% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Java Flight Recorder | 10 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Instruments | 9 | 2 | 82% | 5 | — | — |
| Perfetto | 8 | 2 | 80% | 4 | — | — |
| Nsight SystemsThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“On nsys, agreed it's great, but we wanted something that could run continuously instead of an offline analysis tool.”
“nsight systems makes this pretty simple to do”
“Ive used nsight systems for non GPU stuff to visualize off CPU time equally with on CPU time”
“I especially like the python GIL profiler of nsys.”
“nsys and nvtx are awesome.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.