Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ipapi VS ShieldLabs

Compare ipapi VS ShieldLabs and see what are their differences

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ipapi logo ipapi

Web analytics with IP address lookup and location API

ShieldLabs logo ShieldLabs

Visitor identification behind VPN, proxy, and anti-detect masking with up to 99% accuracy and risk scoring, so you can assess traffic quality and prevent abuse and fraud: fake signups, multi-accounting, and bonus abuse. 5,000 free identifications.
  • ipapi Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-20
Not present

ShieldLabs identifies your visitors and detects anonymity at any level with up to 99% accuracy, so you can assess traffic quality and prevent abuse and fraud.

It covers the full spectrum of anonymity, from a clean visit to VPN, proxy, Tor, anti-detect browsers, browser automation, and other anonymity signals. Every visit gets a risk score from 0 to 100 with the named signals behind it, so you can see exactly why a score is what it is.

What you get

  • Persistent identification that survives cleared cookies, incognito mode, and IP rotation.
  • Named anonymity signals, so you know which kind of anonymity was found.
  • An explainable risk score from 0 to 100, with the signals that produced it.
  • Patterns, pre-computed in the dashboard, pointing to multi-accounting, account sharing, account takeover, and ban evasion.
  • Traffic quality analytics broken down by anonymity level, risk band, and source.

How it works

One JavaScript snippet, about 5 minutes to first signal. Results arrive through a REST API and signed webhooks, available on every plan.

Pricing

5,000 free identifications, no credit card, not time-limited. Paid plans are published and flat, self-serve from the first tier to the last.

Pricing scales with your traffic. Billing is per identification, and the rate per 1,000 goes down as you move up the tiers, so growth makes each identification cheaper rather than more expensive. Yearly billing saves 20%. Traffic above your plan keeps being identified and scored, billed at your plan rate.

ipapi

Website
ipapi.co
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

ShieldLabs

$ Details
freemium $99.0 / Monthly (Starter, 25,000 identifications/mo)
Platforms
Web SaaS REST API
Release Date
2025 September
Startup details
Country
United States
State
Wyoming
City
Sheridan
Founder(s)
Ilya Rubin
Employees
1 - 9

ipapi features and specs

  • Comprehensive Data
    ipapi offers a wide range of data points such as geographic location, time zone, currency, and security-related information, which can be useful for various applications.
  • Real-time Updates
    The API provides real-time updates, ensuring that the information obtained is current and accurate.
  • Easy Integration
    The API is designed to be developer-friendly with a simple and straightforward integration process, supported by extensive documentation.
  • Scalability
    ipapi is built to handle a high volume of requests, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.
  • Security Features
    Provides security-related data such as whether the IP address is a proxy, crawler, or threat, helping to improve the security of your application.

Possible disadvantages of ipapi

  • Cost
    Advanced features and higher usage plans can be costly, especially for small businesses or independent developers.
  • Data Accuracy
    While generally reliable, the accuracy of geolocation data can sometimes be off, especially for mobile and ISP-managed IP addresses.
  • Rate Limiting
    Free and lower-tiered plans come with rate limits, which can be restrictive for high-volume requirements.
  • Dependency on Third-Party Service
    Relying on an external service means you're dependent on their uptime and reliability, which could impact your applications if their service goes down.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Using IP geolocation services might raise privacy concerns among users who are particular about their data, as it involves tracking and storing IP addresses.

ShieldLabs features and specs

  • Visitor identification
    Persistent visitor and device identifiers that survive cleared cookies, incognito mode, and IP rotation
  • Device Intelligence
    Detects anti-detect browsers, browser automation, OS mismatch, and undetectable OS, each as a named signal
  • Network Intelligence
    Detects VPN, proxy, Tor, Apple Private Relay, datacenter IP, and timezone mismatch against the IP location
  • Risk score
    Explainable score from 0 to 100 on every visit, with the named signals behind it
  • Patterns dashboard
    Pre-computed in the dashboard, pointing to multi-accounting, account sharing, account takeover, and other.
  • Traffic quality analytics
    Traffic broken down by anonymity level, risk band, and source
  • Signal collection
    100+ signals per visit across device, browser, OS, IP, and network
  • Setup
    One JavaScript snippet, about 5 minutes to first signal.
  • Integration
    REST API and webhooks on every plan, with signed webhook delivery
  • Free tier
    5,000 identifications, no credit card, not time-limited

Analysis of ipapi

Overall verdict

  • IPapi.co is generally considered a good service for businesses and developers who need reliable IP geolocation data. With its comprehensive set of features, scalable pricing plans, and ease of use, it suits the needs of many users wishing to integrate location services into their applications.

Why this product is good

  • ipapi.co is a popular IP address lookup service that offers real-time geolocation and IP data via a simple to use API. It is favored for its accuracy, speed, ease of integration, and affordability. The service provides detailed information such as location, currency, timezone, and ASN data, making it suitable for various applications.

Recommended for

    Developers, businesses, and organizations seeking to enhance their applications with IP geolocation services. It's especially beneficial for projects involving fraud prevention, targeted content delivery, marketing analysis, and user experience customization.

ipapi videos

How to use the Ipapi API to find information about IP addresses

More videos:

ShieldLabs videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ipapi and ShieldLabs)
IP Data
100 100%
0% 0
Identity Verification And Protection
Geolocation
100 100%
0% 0
Fraud Detection And Prevention

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing ipapi and ShieldLabs.

What makes your product unique?

ShieldLabs's answer:

Identification that holds. ShieldLabs recognises a returning visitor with up to 99% accuracy, through cleared cookies, incognito mode, IP rotation and months between visits, because the device identifier is computed from the device rather than stored in the browser. That cuts both ways: the same recognition that exposes one person running twenty accounts also lets you greet a good returning customer without making them prove who they are again.

Anonymity detection with up to 99% accuracy, at any level rather than a binary VPN yes or no:

  • Network Intelligence covers VPN, proxy, Tor, Apple Private Relay and datacenter IP.
  • Device Intelligence covers anti-detect browsers, browser automation, OS mismatch and undetectable OS.

Each arrives as a separate named signal, so you know which kind of anonymity was found, not just that something was.

The risk score comes apart. Every score from 0 to 100 arrives with the named signals that produced it, so you can see why a visit scored what it did instead of trusting a number you cannot inspect.

Patterns, already correlated. The work across accounts, devices and identities is done before you open the dashboard, pointing to multi-accounting, account sharing, account takeover and account farms operating behind one connection. A starting point for investigation that is waiting when you arrive.

The full detection stack is on every tier. The API and webhooks are included from the first plan, pricing is published, and signup is self-serve all the way through.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

ShieldLabs's answer:

Two groups, and they come in through different doors.

Developers and technical founders, most often the CTO at a team of five to fifty. The product is API-first, so whoever evaluates it is usually whoever integrates it. They want the raw signals and intend to write the decision logic themselves rather than buy a service that makes the call on their behalf.

Growth, marketing and analytics people, who may never open the API. Once the snippet is in, the analytics dashboard is theirs: which traffic sources bring anonymized and high-risk visitors, what share of sessions is clean, how it all moves week to week. For anyone buying traffic that is a direct argument about ad spend. For anyone reporting on product metrics it is the difference between counting sessions and counting people.

Installation takes one person about five minutes, and the dashboard needs no code after that, which is why the buyer and the daily user are often not the same person.

By sector it clusters where a free tier, a promotion or a signup carries real marginal cost:

  • SaaS and AI products, where usage-based infrastructure bills turn each abusive signup into real money
  • Ecommerce and marketplaces, where promotions and first-order discounts get farmed
  • Fintech, where a signup is an account that moves money
  • Gaming, where one person running many accounts distorts the economy for everyone else
  • Crypto and Web3, where airdrops and referral programmes attract farms at scale

It also fits teams with no fraud problem at all. Recognising a good returning visitor is the same capability pointed the other way, whether that means personalising an experience or not asking someone to prove who they are twice.

What's the story behind your product?

ShieldLabs's answer:

ShieldLabs came out of four gaps that repeat across this category.

Who the tooling was built for. Everything that reliably identifies visitors and detects anonymity has been priced and packaged for enterprise buyers: a demo to book, a quote to wait for, a procurement cycle to survive. The teams losing the most to free-tier farming, promo abuse and fake signups are small and self-serve, and that path is not built for them.

What anonymity detection had been reduced to. In most stacks it is a side feature: a binary VPN yes or no bolted onto a product built for something else, usually resting on IP reputation lists that go stale as fast as residential proxy pools rotate through consumer addresses. Anti-detect browsers, the working tool of anyone doing multi-accounting at volume, are rarely a first-class signal at all.

Explainability. Most detection products return a number. When a paying customer trips over that number, the team has nothing to inspect and nothing to tell the user.

The work that begins after the purchase. A product that hands over raw signals has moved the problem rather than solved it, because someone still has to build the model, correlate across accounts and devices, and keep the whole thing current. Time to a first useful answer gets measured in weeks.

So the product was built around four commitments:

  • Anonymity as the product, not a checkbox. Device and network signals together, up to 99% accuracy in detecting anonymity from a clean visit through VPN, proxy, Tor and Privacy Relay to anti-detect browsers and browser automation, each surfaced under its own name.

  • Pricing published, stack whole. The full detection stack on every tier, self-serve from the first plan through the top one, so the path from landing page to first signal runs inside a single session.

  • Every score decomposable into the named signals behind it, so the customer's code owns the decision while ShieldLabs owns the evidence.

  • Usable on day one. One JavaScript snippet, about five minutes to the first signal, patterns already correlated rather than left as an exercise, and an analytics dashboard that reads without code, so the person who needs the answer is not waiting on the person who can write the query.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

ShieldLabs's answer:

Depth at a self-serve price. The level of anonymity detection that usually sits behind an enterprise conversation is available on the entry tier here, and API access is included on every plan rather than unlocked further up.

You can be running today. One JavaScript snippet, about five minutes to the first signal, and the whole path from the pricing page to a working integration is self-serve: no demo to book, no sales call, no quote to wait for. Evaluation happens on your own schedule and on your own traffic.

The score is explainable. When a legitimate customer gets caught by your rules, looking up why is a query rather than a guess.

Patterns arrive pre-computed. The correlation work across accounts and devices is done before you open the dashboard.

Traffic quality is a first-class view, not a by-product of scoring. The analytics dashboard gives you:

  • an overall risk score for your traffic, and how it moves over time
  • the split across Clean, Low, Medium and High risk bands
  • the same breakdown per traffic source, so you can see which channels bring anonymized and high-risk visitors

Your analytics tool tells you where traffic came from. This tells you what arrived. For anyone buying traffic, that turns a monthly ad invoice into something you can argue with.

Pricing is published and flat:

  • the rate per 1,000 identifications drops as you move up the tiers, so growth makes each identification cheaper
  • yearly billing saves 20%
  • the free tier is 5,000 identifications with no card and no expiry, enough to measure signal quality on your own traffic before committing to anything

Your code makes the decision. ShieldLabs returns the signals and the score, so the logic specific to your business stays in your codebase where you can change it.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

ShieldLabs's answer:

What you integrate is deliberately small. One ES module loaded from the CDN, and everything after that arrives through a REST API and signed webhooks. It assumes nothing about your stack.

There is an install guide for whatever you already use: JavaScript, React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Preact, React Native WebView, plus WordPress, Shopify and Tilda.

On WordPress, Shopify and Tilda that means no developer at all. The module goes where the platform already keeps custom code, and that is the whole integration.

Nothing to maintain afterwards. Detection keeps improving without you shipping an update, so what you install today gets better on its own.

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ipapi seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ipapi mentions (21)

  • Building a CMS-Level Firewall: Why Application Context Matters
    // API 1: ip-api.com (free, no key needed, 45 req/min) $response = $http->get("http://ip-api.com/json/{$ip}?fields=proxy,hosting"); If (!empty($data['proxy']) || !empty($data['hosting'])) { return true; // VPN/Proxy detected } // API 2: ipinfo.io (fallback) $response = $http->get("https://ipinfo.io/{$ip}/json"); // Check 'org' field for hosting/vpn/proxy keywords // API 3: ipapi.co (fallback) $response =... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 20 Free Api For Your Next Project
    IPapi - Service that provides you an info about an IP address. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Ipapi - IP Address Location API by Kloudend, Inc - A reliable geolocation API built on AWS, trusted by Fortune 500. The free tier offers 30k lookups/month (1k/day) without signup. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Lookout! VPN Brute Force Attempts from 109.206.242.48
    Yeah still confused as to where you are getting https://www.criminalip.io/en and https://ipapi.co/ from iplocation.net (which I use all the time to also get GEO-IP location). Source: about 3 years ago
  • Lookout! VPN Brute Force Attempts from 109.206.242.48
    I would suggest reaching out to this company https://www.criminalip.io/en as well as this company. https://ipapi.co/. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

ShieldLabs mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of ShieldLabs yet. Tracking of ShieldLabs recommendations started around Jul 2026.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ipapi and ShieldLabs, you can also consider the following products

ipinfo.io - Simple IP address information.

IPQualityScore - IPQualityScore (IPQS) proactively prevents fraud without disrupting the user experience. Access leading fraud prevention tools to detect bots, emulators, VPNs, proxies, stolen user data, and fake users.

ipstack - ipstack is a free, real-time IP address to location JSON API and database service supporting IPv4 and IPv6 lookup.

FingerprintJS - Fraud detection and prevention using browser fingerprinting with 99.5% accuracy. Stops account sharing, payment processing fraud and gaming.

ipgeolocation.io - Free IP Geolocation API and Accurate GeoIP Lookup Location Database

SEON - SEON Sense Platform is a modular and AI-powered fraud detection software that deliver clear results with an automated, machine-driven workflow.