How to Profile and Optimize HTTP Servers in Go

Use the runtime/pprof package to capture CPU profiles and the net/http/pprof package to expose profiling endpoints on your HTTP server. Add the following code to your server initialization to enable profiling at /debug/pprof:

import (
    "net/http"
    "net/http/pprof"
)

func main() {
    // Enable pprof endpoints
    http.HandleFunc("/debug/pprof/", pprof.Index)
    http.HandleFunc("/debug/pprof/cmdline", pprof.Cmdline)
    http.HandleFunc("/debug/pprof/profile", pprof.Profile)
    http.HandleFunc("/debug/pprof/symbol", pprof.Symbol)
    http.HandleFunc("/debug/pprof/trace", pprof.Trace)

    // Start your server
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

To capture a CPU profile for 30 seconds, visit http://localhost:8080/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30 in your browser or use curl. Analyze the downloaded profile with go tool pprof <profile-file>.

Profiling helps you find slow parts of your code so you can make them faster. Think of it like a speed camera that tells you exactly where your car is driving too slowly. You use it when your server feels sluggish or uses too much CPU.