Free or inexpensive options for profiling / performance analysis for C# asp.net?

Question

Title pretty much says it all. I know about Redgate's Ants Profiler which I hear is awesome but it's also $400. Any cheaper alternatives out there that will at least point me to where I might need to optimize my code?

Answer 1

Dottrace is about half the price of Ants, and it's really good. Made by the same people that do ReSharper.

If you're just looking for a one-off optimization of your code, then you should go for Ants anyway, since it has a full-featured 15-day free trial, which should be enough to get a lot of optimization done.

Answer 2

VSProfiler ships with VS and works pretty well. If you are looking at memory related issues then CLRProfiler will be your option.

Answer 3

In general, the method I use is this.

I'm not so much interested in timing pieces of the code as in finding big unnecessary time-takers so I can clean them out and accomplish speedup.

It's really a different process.

ADDED: If I can elaborate, typical performance problems I see are that some activity (which is nearly always a function call) is consuming some fraction of time, like 10%, 50%, 90%, whatever, and it is not really necessary - it can be replaced with something else or not done at all, and that amount of time will be saved.

Suppose for illustration it's 50%.

I take random-time samples of the call stack, 10 for example, and that call has a 50% chance of appearing on each one, so it will be on roughly half of the samples. Thus it will attract my attention, and I will look to see if what it is doing is really necessary, and if not, I will fix it to get the speedup.

Now, was that measuring? If so, it was really poor measurement, because the number of samples was so small. If 5 out of 10 samples showed the call, the fraction of time is probably around 50%, give or take, and it's definitely more than 10%. So I may not know the percent with precision, but I definitely know it is worth fixing, and I definitely know exactly where the problem is.

(Side note: I did not count the number of calls, or estimate the call duration. Rather, I estimated the cost of the call, which is what removing it would save, which is its fractional residence time on the stack. Also notice that I am working at the call level, not the function level. I may care what function calls are above and below the call of interest, but other than that, function-level issues, such as exclusive time, call graphs, and recursion, play no part.)

That's why I say measuring performance, and finding performance problems, while they may be complementary, are really different tasks.

Answer 4

EQATEC Profiler is free.

I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds ok and there are some positive testimonials on their site.

I'd be interested to hear the opinion of anyone who has actually used it.