Shifter vs Proxy Cheap
Looking for a Proxy Cheap alternative? Its gateway answered around 70% of our requests with redirects and reset another fifth, in every country we tested. Shifter completed the same test and costs 85% less per GB.
Approuvé par 50,000+ clients dans le monde entier
Every provider in this series gets the same test: plain HTTP, one fresh connection per request, 1,000 concurrent, 10 second timeout. Proxy Cheap completed between 10.3% and 14.4% of it depending on the country. Roughly 70% of requests came back as redirects to the HTTPS form and another 20% as reset connections, and the pattern held across all five countries rather than appearing in one bad run. We report the behaviour as observed and do not attribute a cause: these runs cannot separate a gateway configuration from a rate limit or an account restriction. Because so little completed, the counts below are a floor on what the network holds, not a measurement of it.
A flat rate, at nearly seven times ours
Proxy Cheap charges $4.99 per GB at every volume with no discount. Shifter falls to $0.75 from 200 GB.
| Volume mensuel | Shifter | Proxy Cheap | Vous économisez |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entrée | 10 $ 5 GB at $2.00/GB | $4.99/GB flat at every volume | 60% |
| 100 GB | $100 $1.00/GB | $499 $4.99/GB | 80% |
| Meilleur tarif | $0.75/GB from 200 GB | $4.99/GB no volume discount | 85% |
IP actives en ligne pendant le test
A lower bound, not a measurement. Only 10% to 14% of requests completed, so Proxy Cheap's real pool is larger than these counts. They are published because they are what the identical test returned, and the shortfall is a property of the gateway a buyer would hit too.
Chaque métrique, pays par pays
Pick a country to see the complete measurement, including the numbers that did not go our way.
| Métrique | Shifter | Proxy Cheap |
|---|---|---|
| Requêtes envoyées | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| IP actives pendant le test | 136,667 | 14,223 |
| Réseaux uniques (ASNs) | 1,606 | 354 |
| Villes uniques | 5,813 | 2,085 |
| Latence moyenne | 364 ms | 2,167 ms |
| Taux de succès | 99.8% | 10.3% |
Of 250,000 identical requests, Proxy Cheap completed 10.3%. Those returned 14,223 live US addresses across 354 networks, against 136,667 across 1,606 for Shifter, and answered in 2,167 ms against 364 ms. At $4.99 per GB against $0.75, it is also the more expensive of the two by a factor of six.
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.
Proxy Cheap completed 10.3% to 14.4% of those requests. The shortfall was roughly 70% redirects to the HTTPS form and 20% reset connections in every country. A single request through the same gateway succeeds, so the behaviour appears under sustained load rather than at all times.
We did not switch transport or lower concurrency to lift the number, because every other provider is measured this way and a client that loses most of its requests is something you would rather discover here than in production. The counts are a floor: the network holds more than this test could reach.
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.
Pourquoi utiliser Shifter des proxies résidentiels ?
Answers the standard test
Shifter completed the same plain HTTP test in every country. Proxy Cheap completed 10.3% to 14.4%, mostly redirects and reset connections.
A far larger live pool everywhere
136,667 US addresses against 14,223, and 22,005 German against 615. Even treating their counts as a floor, the gap is an order of magnitude.
Five to ten times faster
364 ms against 2,167 ms in the United States and 428 ms against 4,547 ms in Germany, on the same target from the same machine.
85% less per GB, with a ladder that moves
$0.75 against a flat $4.99. Proxy Cheap charges the same rate at 1 GB and 1 TB, so volume earns you nothing.
Questions fréquentes Questions FAQ
Common questions about how we benchmarked Proxy Cheap.
Around 70% came back as redirects to the HTTPS form and another 20% as reset connections, consistently in all five countries. A single request through the same gateway succeeds, so it appears under sustained load. We report what we measured and do not guess at whether it is the gateway, a rate limit or an account restriction.
Requests that actually complete
A network that answers what you send it, with a far deeper pool in every market, at $0.75 per GB against $4.99.