Shifter vs Infatica
Looking for an Infatica alternative? We counted the residential IPs each network had live and answering in five markets. Shifter led four of them, reached a wider spread of networks in every one, and costs 71% less per GB at scale.
Trusted by 50,000+ clients worldwide
Every provider in this series gets the same test: plain HTTP, one fresh connection per request, 1,000 concurrent, 10 second timeout. Infatica completed 0 of 560,000 requests under it. Its gateway answered every single one with a redirect to the HTTPS form, so it cannot be used over plain HTTP at all. That is a real constraint on your integration: an HTTP client pointed at this gateway gets redirects rather than data, and each request has to carry a TLS handshake instead. The counts below therefore come from a second run over a CONNECT tunnel, which is the only transport it accepts.
More coverage, at a fraction of the rate
Lowest published rate per GB from each provider. Infatica's floor needs a 1 TB commitment, while Shifter reaches its best rate from 200 GB.
| Monthly volume | Shifter | Infatica | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $10 5 GB at $2.00/GB | $96 25 GB at $3.84/GB | 48% |
| 100 GB | $100 $1.00/GB | ~$300 ~$3.00/GB | 67% |
| Best rate | $0.75/GB from 200 GB | $2.60/GB 1 TB tier | 71% |
Live IPs online during the test
Measured over a CONNECT tunnel, the only transport Infatica's gateway accepts, since it completed none of the standard plain HTTP test. Both sides ran the same volumes against the same target. These are IPs live and reachable at test time, not the size of either network.
Every metric, country by country
Pick a country to see the complete measurement, including the numbers that did not go our way.
| Metric | Shifter | Infatica |
|---|---|---|
| Requests sent | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| Live IPs during the test | 136,667 | 139,334 |
| Unique networks (ASNs) | 1,606 | 1,279 |
| Unique cities | 5,813 | 5,504 |
| Success rate | 99.8% | 99.1% |
Shifter drew its US pool from 1,606 networks against 1,279, a 26% wider spread, and covered 5,813 cities against 5,504. Infatica held only 2.0% more live IPs, 139,334 against 136,667, a gap smaller than the drift between two runs an hour apart. A 100 GB month costs $100 with Shifter against roughly $300.
How we measured this
Every provider in this series receives the identical test: plain HTTP to an IP echo service, one fresh connection per request, 1,000 concurrent, 10 second timeout, and fixed volumes of 250,000 requests in the United States, 100,000 in the United Kingdom, 80,000 in France, 70,000 in Canada and 60,000 in Germany. One connection per request means one fresh exit per request, so distinct addresses map directly to the reachable pool.
Infatica completed none of it. We report that as the result rather than quietly changing the test, because a gateway that will not answer a plain HTTP client is something you need to know before you wire it in.
To produce comparable pool figures at all, Infatica was then re-run over a CONNECT tunnel, the transport it does accept, at the same volumes and concurrency against the same target. Latency is not compared anywhere on this page: the tunnel adds a TLS handshake to every request that the plain HTTP Shifter run does not carry, so the timings would measure our transport rather than their network.
What these numbers mean
Every count on this page is the number of IPs that were live and reachable at the time of the test, not the size of either provider's network. Residential IPs rotate constantly as real devices come online and drop off, so across a full day both networks serve far more addresses than a single window can capture. What limits a crawl is how many respond at the same moment, which is what this measures.
Why use Shifter residential proxies?
A larger live pool in four of five markets
32% more in Germany, 25% more in France, 15% more in the United Kingdom, ahead in Canada, measured in the same windows against the same target.
Wider network spread in every market
1,606 US networks against 1,279, 148 French against 44, 276 German against 154. Concentration on fewer networks is what makes a pool easy to fingerprint.
71% less per GB
$0.75 against $2.60 at each provider's best published rate, and Infatica's floor needs a 1 TB commitment while Shifter's arrives at 200 GB.
Answers the standard test
Shifter completed the same plain HTTP test at 96% to 99% in every market. Shifter accepts HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, so your client works whichever you point at it.
Frequently asked FAQ questions
Common questions about how we benchmarked Infatica.
In the United States, by 2.0%: 139,334 live IPs against Shifter's 136,667 in the same window. Shifter led the other four markets and reached more networks in all five, including 1,606 US networks against 1,279.
More networks, less per GB
A wider spread of networks in every market we measured, a larger live pool in four of five, at 71% less per GB.