You can use them pretty much the same as hierarchical bar charts - at least I do. The two things to look for are a) entries with a big flat surface on top - the

You can use them pretty much the same as hierarchical bar charts - at least I do. The two things to look for are a) entries with a big flat surface on top - these are functions with a lot of intrinsic time (i.e. stuff that would show up as "most time in function" in a traditional profiler) b) entries that are wider than they should be - the things that you'd look into by repeatedly expanding the hierarchical bar chart, you can look into by going from the bottom of the flamegraph up. For me when using a traditional profiler I often find myself switching back and forth between those two views (functions with most intrinstic time versus tree of function calls by time) and having to expand and contract different parts of that tree breakdown. So the advantage of a flamegraph is putting all that information on one page.