I actually have the same concern. We would like to buy AQTime but still hesitate to.
We are using C++Builder. We use a lot of C++ features, such as STL, template, virtual functions, which have poor performance if no code optimization is applied. So we need to profile the program built in release mode, otherwise those C++ features would lead to much mass.
For our visual studio projects, we use open source software Luke Stackwalker to do code profiling. It works great for release builds. So I don't think it is impossible for SmartBear to support profiling release build in AQTimes.
