Shifter vs SOAX
Looking for a SOAX alternative? Shifter served more live residential IPs than SOAX in every country tested, from 22% more in the United States to nearly six times more in Germany, and completed a higher share of requests in four of the five.
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Cheaper at the volumes teams actually buy
Price per GB on a 100 GB month. SOAX sells credits rather than plain bandwidth, and its multi-terabyte enterprise brackets fall below Shifter's floor.
| Monthly volume | Shifter | SOAX | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $10 5 GB at $2.00/GB | Sandbox $5.00/GB, Tier 1 | 60% |
| 100 GB | $100 $1.00/GB | $300 $3.00/GB Builder rate | 67% |
| 500 GB | $375 $0.75/GB | $1,100 $2.20/GB Team rate | 66% |
| Best published rate | $0.75/GB from 200 GB | $0.85/GB Enterprise, $3,000/mo | 12% |
Live IPs online during the test
Distinct IPs each network had live and reachable at test time, not the size of its total network. Residential IPs rotate all day, so both providers serve far more addresses across 24 hours.
Every metric, country by country
Pick a country to see the complete measurement, including the numbers that did not go our way.
| Metric | Shifter | SOAX |
|---|---|---|
| Requests sent | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| Live IPs during the test | 136,667 | 112,112 |
| Unique networks (ASNs) | 1,606 | 1,371 |
| Unique cities | 5,813 | 6,039 |
| Average latency | 364 ms | 534 ms |
| Success rate | 99.8% | 84.6% |
Shifter served 21.9% more live US IPs than SOAX, 136,667 against 112,112, across 1,606 networks against 1,371. SOAX completed 84.6% of its requests.
How we measured this
Each request opened its own connection through the provider's rotating residential gateway, then read the exit address back from an IP echo service. One connection per request means one fresh exit per request, so distinct addresses measure the reachable pool directly.
SOAX and Shifter ran with matched request counts, concurrency of 1,000, a 10 second timeout and the same target, sequentially on one server so neither test interfered with the other.
Country volumes were fixed and identical for both providers, from 60,000 requests in the smallest market up to 250,000 in the United States, totalling 560,000 per provider.
What these numbers mean
Every number here counts IPs that were live and reachable while the test ran, not the total size of either network. Residential IPs rotate throughout the day as real devices come and go, so both providers touch far more addresses over 24 hours than a single window can show. The useful figure for a crawler is how many are online at once, and that is what we measured. Sample sizes differ per country, so read each country's comparison on its own.
Why use Shifter residential proxies?
More live IPs in every country
From 21.9% more in the United States to 476% more in Germany. The only pairing in this benchmark where Shifter led on raw pool in all five markets.
Consistently higher success rate
SOAX completed 79.3% to 85.8% of requests depending on the country. Roughly one request in five failed in the United Kingdom.
Several times the network spread
276 German networks against 111 and 148 French against 28. SOAX's smaller pools also sit on far fewer autonomous systems.
Straightforward bandwidth pricing
Shifter sells gigabytes at a published rate. SOAX prices in credits with country tiers and volume brackets, which makes the real cost harder to predict.
Frequently asked FAQ questions
Common questions about how we benchmarked SOAX.
Run concurrent requests through both gateways to an IP echo endpoint, opening a new connection each time, and count distinct exit addresses. Match the request count, machine and time window across both providers.
Check it against your own countries
Coverage gaps vary by market. Run the same test in the countries you actually target and see which network has more IPs online when your crawl runs.