Sciagraph vs. Fil

Fil is a free, open-source memory profiler for Python. It shares some design goals with Sciagraph, but is also different in many ways.

	Fil	Sciagraph
Use case	Data processing, but can also be used for any Python application	Data processing only
Offline development	✅	✅
Production	❌	✅
Memory profiling	✅	✅ with some limitations: uses sampling, so not useful for applications allocating <100MB RAM
Multiprocessing support	❌	✅
Performance profiling	❌	✅
Runtime overhead	Up to 40-50%	Negligible to ~5%
Supported platforms	Linux, macOS	Linux, macOS
Pricing	Open source, unlimited free use	Commercial software. Limited free plan, paid plans

In more detail:

• Fil is open source, unlike Sciagraph.
• Sciagraph has performance profiling; Fil does not, it only does memory profiling.
• If you purchase the appropriate plan, Sciagraph can be used in production, unlike Fil.
• Fil can track much smaller memory allocations because it tracks all allocations; Sciagraph uses sampling so will only work well on applications that use more memory (100MB and up).