Shifter vs Byteful
Looking for a Byteful alternative? Shifter served more live residential IPs than Byteful in every country tested and completed far more of its requests. Byteful failed roughly one request in four in Germany during our run, and costs more than twice as much per GB at its best rate.
Utilizado por 50,000+ clientes em todo o mundo
Lower cost, and far fewer wasted requests
Lowest published rate per GB from each provider. Byteful advertises $3.25 as standard, falling to $1.75 at volume.
| Volume mensal | Shifter | Byteful | Você economiza |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $10 5 GB at $2.00/GB | $3.25 per GB, standard rate | 38% |
| 100 GB | $100 $1.00/GB | ~$250 ~$2.50/GB mid volume | 60% |
| Melhor taxa | $0.75/GB from 200 GB | $1.75/GB at volume | 57% |
IPs ativos on-line durante o teste
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.
Cada métrica, país por país
Pick a country to see the complete measurement, including the numbers that did not go our way.
| Métrica | Shifter | Byteful |
|---|---|---|
| Requisições enviadas | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| IPs ativos durante o teste | 136,667 | 117,330 |
| Redes únicas (ASNs) | 1,606 | 1,300 |
| Cidades únicas | 5,813 | 5,343 |
| Latência média | 364 ms | 937 ms |
| Taxa de sucesso | 99.8% | 92% |
Shifter served 16.5% more live US IPs than Byteful, 136,667 against 117,330, from 1,606 networks against 1,300, and answered in 364 ms against 937 ms. Byteful completed 92% of its requests.
How we measured this
Each request opened its own connection through the provider's rotating residential gateway and read the exit address back from an IP echo service. One connection per request means one new exit per request, so distinct addresses map directly to the reachable pool.
Byteful and Shifter ran with matched request counts, concurrency of 1,000, a 10 second timeout and the same target, sequentially on a single server so neither test starved the other of bandwidth.
Volumes were fixed per country and applied equally to both providers, from 60,000 requests in the smallest market up to 250,000 in the United States, 560,000 per provider in total.
What these numbers mean
Each figure counts IPs that were live and reachable while the test ran, not the total size of either network. Residential addresses rotate all day as consumer devices connect and disconnect, so both providers touch far more over 24 hours than one window can capture. What governs a crawl is how many answer at the same moment, which is what we counted. Sample sizes vary by country, so read each country against itself rather than against the others.
Por que usar Shifter proxies residenciais?
More live IPs in all five countries
From 16.5% more in the United States to 66% more in France. Shifter led coverage in every market tested, with the gap widening outside the US.
Requests that actually complete
Byteful finished between 74.4% and 92% of requests depending on country. Failures are paid for twice, once in bandwidth and once in crawl time.
Two to three times the network spread
148 French networks against 43 and 276 German against 138. A pool sitting on few autonomous systems is easier to identify and block as a group.
Roughly twice as fast
324 ms against 848 ms in Canada and 364 ms against 937 ms in the United States, ahead in every country.
Perguntas frequentes
Common questions about how we benchmarked Byteful.
Send concurrent requests through both gateways to an IP echo endpoint, opening a fresh connection each time so the gateway rotates, and count distinct exit addresses. Match request count, machine and time window across both providers.
Because it counts IPs live at the time of the test, not a lifetime total. Advertised pools include every address a network has ever seen. Residential IPs rotate continuously, so both providers serve far more across a day. We measured how many answered in one country at one moment.
We can only report what came back. Between 8% and 25.6% of requests returned an error or timed out depending on country, using the same method, volumes and window as every other provider here. Germany was the worst at 74.4% completion.
On most billing models a failed or retried request still moves data, so a low success rate raises the effective cost per useful response beyond the headline rate per GB.
Get requests that come back
More live IPs in every country we measured, a much higher completion rate and a lower price per GB. Run the same test on your own targets.