A bus bandwidth consumption profiler for measuring and reporting bus cycle utilization in a system having multiple bus masters, including master counters paired with the masters to count cycles of bus ownership, and a realtime counter to count elapsed cycles between profile events generated by either a realtime counter roll-over, or a system read signal. Upon a profile event, the counts of the master counters are simultaneously output to the system and the realtime count is determined. Alternatively, the profiler includes a total counter for counting the combined bus cycles owned by all masters, and fewer master counters than masters, each configurable to count a selected master. Upon a profile event, the counts of the master counters, the total counter, and the realtime counter are simultaneously output to the system. Accordingly, the bandwidth consumption of the selected masters and the combined, non-selected masters, can be calculated using fewer counters.