An apparatus and method are described for a hardware transactional memory (HTM) profiler. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises a transactional debugger (TDB) recording module to record data related to the execution of transactional memory program code, including data related to the execution of branches and transactional events in the transactional memory program code; and a profiler to analyze portions of the recorded data using trace-based replay techniques to responsively generate profile data comprising transaction-level events and function-level conflict data usable to optimize the transactional memory program code.