# yandex/perforator

Perforator is a cluster-wide continuous profiling tool designed for large data centers

Repository: https://github.com/yandex/perforator
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/perforator
Homepage: https://perforator.tech
Language: C++
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: continuous-profiling, ebpf, flamegraph, performance, performance-tools, profiling
Last push: 2026-08-26T22:03:11+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 78/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 72, longevity 41
- inputs: {"age_days": 581, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 190, "gap_med": 17, "n_releases_24m": 8}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3417, forks 159 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:03.750682+00:00)

## What it is
Perforator is a cluster-wide continuous profiling tool by Yandex that collects CPU profiles from production servers using eBPF with negligible overhead. It provides scalable profile storage, flamegraph UI, and supports C, C++, Go, and Rust without recompilation.

## Use cases
- continuously profile CPU usage across a large fleet of servers
- find performance bottlenecks in production services without frame pointers or debug symbols
- deploy cluster-wide profiling on a Kubernetes cluster
- generate sPGO profiles for profile-guided optimization builds
- profile a laptop locally as a replacement for Linux perf
- inspect CPU usage of C++, Go, or Rust applications via flamegraphs

## When to choose
- you need low-overhead continuous profiling across many Linux machines
- you cannot rebuild applications with frame pointers or debug symbols
- you want PGO profile generation for native code
- you run Kubernetes and want Helm-based profiling deployment

## When to avoid
- you need profiling on non-Linux platforms like macOS or Windows
- you primarily profile Java or Python, which are only experimentally supported
- you need memory or GPU profiling rather than CPU profiling

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: monitoring, tracing, benchmarking, developer-tools
- domain: performance, monitoring, developer-tools, microservices
- platform: self-hosted, cli
- tags: continuous-profiling, ebpf, flamegraph, profiling, autofdo, spgo, performance-analysis, devops, linux, kubernetes, docker, web-server

## Member repositories
- yandex/perforator (main) score 78

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:03.750682+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 2026-08-29T18:38:14.705764+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/yandex/perforator (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:03.750682+00:00, sha e8791e52451c)
  - homepage: https://perforator.tech (fetched 2026-08-29T09:32:31.511452+00:00, sha fa9ac5d63cd9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.