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.
Trusted by 50,000+ clients worldwide
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.
| Monthly volume | Shifter | Byteful | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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% |
| Best rate | $0.75/GB from 200 GB | $1.75/GB at volume | 57% |
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 | Byteful |
|---|---|---|
| Requests sent | 250,000 | 250,000 |
| Live IPs during the test | 212,212 | 117,330 |
| Unique networks (ASNs) | 1,828 | 1,300 |
| Unique cities | 5,805 | 5,343 |
| Average latency | 427 ms | 937 ms |
| Success rate | 100% | 92% |
Shifter served 80.9% more live US IPs than Byteful, 212,212 against 117,330, from 1,828 networks against 1,300, and answered in 427 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, on a single server. Byteful ran on 5 August 2026 and Shifter was re-measured on 7 October 2026 with identical settings.
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.
Why use Shifter residential proxies?
More live IPs in all five countries
From 46% more in Germany to 144% more in France. Shifter led coverage in every market tested, with the widest gap in France.
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.
Up to three times the network spread
147 French networks against 43 and 272 German against 138. A pool sitting on few autonomous systems is easier to identify and block as a group.
Roughly twice as fast
377 ms against 848 ms in Canada and 427 ms against 937 ms in the United States, ahead in every country.
Frequently asked questions
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 and volumes 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.