There are no good python profiling tools. Here is what I consider necessary from a profiler:

1. Cross platform
2. Profiling of live applications
3. Ability to generate profiler dumps (preferably gprof compatible)
4. Call tree profiling
5. Line-level profiling

The built-in python profilers cProfile and profile don’t meet 1, 2, and 5. 3rd party alternatives also fall short.

Pyflame

A great live profiler:

• low overhead.
• live profiling of processes.
• generates profiler dumps, convertible to gprof and svg.
• Can generate Chrome profiler dumps.

but it has some limitations

• Uses linux’s strace so it’s not cross platform.

To complicate matters:

• strace is not enabled by default on docker containers.
• strace is disabled for regular users on a lot of distros.

Vprof

• Linux only

line_profiler

• Uses cProfile so it shares its limitations

References

https://kupczynski.info/2015/01/16/profiling-python-scripts.html