Shifter Review

The widest network spread and the lowest rate we measured, on a pool within 10% of the deepest.

9.7 /10

Live pool

9.1

Network spread

10

Price per GB

10

Response time

10

Country coverage

10

Features

9

Transparency

9.5

The short version

• Shifter served 279,244 live IPs across five countries, third deepest of the fifteen networks measured and within 10% of the largest.
• Its 2,441 distinct operators are the widest spread in the series, ahead of Decodo, Oxylabs and Webshare.
• Median responses of 324 ms to 445 ms make it the quickest network we have measured, averaging 400 ms.
• It covered 14,780 cities across the five countries, more than any other network tested.
• At $0.75 per GB it is the joint cheapest published rate, and the ladder falls from $2.00 without a sales call.

At a glance

What we measured

Our own side of the same runs every competitor was measured on: identical request volumes, concurrency and destination, from the same machine.

This is our own network

Shifter publishes this benchmark series, so treat the verdict accordingly. What is worth your attention is the method rather than the opinion: every network here, ours included, received the identical test from the same machine, and the figures below are the same ones the competitor pages compare against.

The rubric is unchanged for this page. Six of the eight criteria are calculated from measurements normalised across the whole field, which is why Webshare outscores us on pool depth and why our own score is not a ten. If you want to check any of it, the method is published on every benchmark page and the test is reproducible with a few hundred lines of code.

Where the network is strongest

Network spread is the clearest result. Across five countries Shifter drew from 2,441 distinct operators, more than any other network measured, ahead of Decodo at 2,284 and Oxylabs at 2,283. Anti-bot systems key on the network an address belongs to rather than the address itself, so the same pool size spread across more operators is harder to fingerprint.

Latency follows. Medians ran 324 ms in Canada to 445 ms in France, averaging 400 ms, the quickest set of timings in the series. Several networks charging three to six times as much returned two to ten times slower.

City coverage came to 14,780 distinct cities across the five countries, again the widest measured, which matters when targets key on local signals rather than country alone.

Where it does not lead

On raw pool count Shifter is third. Webshare returned 306,410 live addresses across the five countries and Decodo 281,121, against our 279,244. In the United States specifically, Oxylabs, Proxy-Seller and Infatica each edged us by 2% or less, and Webshare by 10%.

Those gaps are real and they are published on the pages concerned. What they mostly reflect is that pool depth and network spread are different things: Webshare returned 9.7% more addresses from 185 fewer operators.

Two other honest gaps. DataImpulse sells genuine pay as you go with no plan, which we do not offer, and SOAX targets specific carriers more precisely than we do. If either is what your work needs, they are the better fit.

Pricing, and why the ladder matters

Shifter starts at $2.00 per GB on a 5 GB plan, reaches $1.00 at 50 GB and falls to $0.75 from 200 GB. Every rate is published; none of it requires a sales conversation.

That last point does more work than the headline number. Several networks quote an attractive best rate that turns out to need a four-figure monthly commitment: Oxylabs $2.50 needs $2,500 a month, SOAX $0.85 needs $3,000, Evomi $2.20 needs 5 TB. Compared at 100 GB, a volume real buyers actually purchase, the market sits between $2.25 and $5.50 while Shifter is $1.00.

The company has been trading since 2012, which in a market where brands appear and disappear inside a year counts for something on its own.

Pricing

Pros and cons

Who Shifter is for

How we scored it