apitrace vs Tracy Profiler

apitrace records OpenGL, Direct3D and DirectDraw API calls in trace files for replay and examination. Recorded calls can be replayed on another machine; OpenGL traces can also be replayed across operating systems. Its tools let users inspect graphics state and call data, view framebuffers and textures, edit trace files and profile performance. Coverage varies across APIs and operations: the feature matrix spans OpenGL 1.0–4.5, OpenGL ES 1.0–3.0, Direct3D 7–11.x and DirectDraw. Command-line profiling can capture frame, GPU, CPU and pixels-drawn data, with shader-profile formatting available through a script. The operating-system matrix lists Linux, OS X and Windows for tracing, replay, command-line and GUI use. Windows and Linux binaries are available for x86_64 and Arm64, with Windows x86 binaries also provided. The open-source project is licensed under MIT. One stated limitation is that programmatic Direct3D capture interfaces are unsupported. The maintainer says patches, issues and requests are handled as time permits, and the project links to a manual, bug-reporting guide, source-hacking guide, wiki and mailing list.

Tracy Profiler is a remote profiler for games and other applications, built to capture telemetry in real time at nanosecond resolution. It combines CPU profiling with frame and sampling analysis, and supports C, C++, Lua, Python and Fortran integrations. GPU profiling covers OpenGL, Vulkan, Direct3D 11/12, Metal, OpenCL, CUDA and WebGPU. Tracy can also capture memory allocations, locks and context switches, and associate screenshots with recorded frames. A capture daemon can find Tracy clients over UDP and save each capture to a separate file; a separate tool merges multi-process traces. Merging preserves zones, messages and plots, but drops GPU zones, memory events and call stacks. Sampling can heuristically reconstruct zone call stacks. An optional assistant analyzes captured data with llama.cpp models and requires local setup. Tracy is free under the 3-clause BSD license. Platforms include Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS and other listed environments; releases include PDF documentation and compiled Windows x64 binaries.