# jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler

A sampling JVM profiler without the safepoint sample bias

Repository: https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/honest-profiler
Homepage: https://github.com/RichardWarburton/honest-profiler/wiki
Language: Java
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2023-12-05T22:06:45+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4580, "days_push": 1002, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1251, forks 147 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:08.127171+00:00)

## What it is
Honest Profiler is a sampling profiler for the JVM implemented as a native agent, designed to avoid the safepoint sample bias that skews other sampling profilers. It runs with low overhead, making it suitable for profiling production applications.

## Use cases
- profile a Java application in production with low overhead
- find CPU hotspots in a JVM application without safepoint bias
- diagnose performance bottlenecks in Java services
- sample JVM thread stacks accurately
- compare method-level CPU costs in a Java app

## When to choose
- you need accurate sampling profiles of JVM applications without safepoint bias
- you want a lightweight profiler suitable for production use
- you prefer a simple agent-based profiler over heavyweight GUI tools

## When to avoid
- you need a full-featured profiler with a rich GUI and allocation tracking
- you run a non-HotSpot JVM, since it relies on internal OpenJDK/Oracle JVM APIs
- you need actively maintained tooling with recent features

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: monitoring, tracing, benchmarking, developer-tools
- domain: performance, developer-tools
- platform: jvm, windows, cross-platform
- tags: profiling, sampling-profiler, jvm-agent, low-overhead, safepoint-bias, jvm, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:08.127171+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T05:07:40.684147+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/honest-profiler (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:08.127171+00:00, sha a1290314757b)
  - homepage: https://github.com/RichardWarburton/honest-profiler/wiki (fetched 2026-08-29T12:18:26.112765+00:00, sha 2a104ecd7dff)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.