The Shift browser alternatives: what you can drop

Shift is a Chromium-based desktop browser built by Redbrick, a company group based in Victoria, British Columbia. On October 18, 2026, the Shift pricing page lists two plans for individuals: Free, with 5 Spaces and 10 apps per Space, and Advanced, at $199.99 billed annually or $19.99 billed monthly, with no limit on either. Shift also now ships Blocker, a free built-in ad blocker, with YouTube ad blocking reserved for Advanced. Anyone typing "redbrick shift" into a search box is usually checking one of three things: who is actually behind the browser, what it costs after the latest rebuild, and what else could do the same job. This guide answers all three, in that order, and then shows which parts of Shift are easy to give up and which are not.

This site is run by the maker of an app aggregation browser for macOS, so the comparisons below stick to figures each vendor publishes.

Redbrick, the company behind Shift

Redbrick lists Shift on its company page next to its other businesses, which include Animoto and Leadpages. The address given there is 1515 Douglas Street, Victoria. The same page names the Shift leadership: Neil Henderson as CEO, Michael Foucher in charge of product and customer experience, Conrad Foucher on technology, and Doug Middleton on operations. The footer of shift.com adds that Shift is B Corp Certified as a Redbrick company.

Why should ownership matter for a browser? Because an app aggregation browser holds live sessions for mail, chat, calendars and client dashboards all at once. That makes three practical questions worth asking before committing:

• Where the setup is stored. Shift can sync Spaces, apps and bookmarks between devices once an account exists and sync is switched on.
• What support looks like. The pricing table lists email and chatbot support on Free, and adds video calling on Advanced.
• Who keeps it maintained. A product inside a group with several revenue lines carries a different kind of risk than a hobby project, and that cuts both ways.

There is also a less flattering reason this query gets typed. Some people find Shift on a computer without remembering installing it. Shift's own FAQ has an entry that explains how the browser can arrive on a computer unannounced, and the uninstall entry for Mac ends with deleting the ShiftData folder in ~/Library/Application Support/. If that is the situation, removing the app and that folder is the whole fix, and the rest of this page is optional.

What Free and Advanced include right now

Checked on the pricing page on October 18, 2026:

	Free	Advanced
Price	$0	$199.99 per year, or $19.99 per month
Spaces	5	Unlimited
Apps	10 per Space	Unlimited
Shift AI	Limited usage	Expanded usage
Ad blocking	Blocker included	Blocker plus YouTube ads
Support	Email and chatbot	Adds video calling

The page labels the annual option as a $40 saving. Paying $19.99 for twelve months adds up to $239.88, so the real gap is $39.89. Close enough, but worth knowing when budgeting. For a team, the same page points to a separate Teams offer with consolidated billing and a central dashboard, priced on request through a contact form rather than listed.

A few contract terms sit in the Shift FAQ rather than on the pricing table, and they decide how risky a trial of Advanced is:

• A full refund can be requested within 14 days of the original purchase or of any renewal payment.
• Uninstalling the app does not cancel the subscription. Cancelling is done from the subscription section of the account portal.
• Shift runs on Windows 10 and 11 and on Mac. The FAQ recommends at least 8GB of RAM and says macOS 11 Big Sur or newer is required.

The 14-day refund window is the useful part. It means Advanced can be bought, tested against a real workload, and refunded if the extra Spaces turn out not to matter.

The v9 problem: two prices on one website

The FAQ still carries an older answer to "How much does Shift cost?". It describes a free plan with 2 Spaces and up to 5 apps per Space, and Advanced at $149.00 USD per year. Both figures belong to Shift v9, the previous generation of the browser. The FAQ has separate entries on getting the new version from v9, on migrating a v9 account, and on the difference between v9 and the latest Shift browser. Taken together, they confirm that two generations of the product are being run side by side while users are moved across, and that some help answers have not yet been rewritten for the new build.

This matters for anyone comparing alternatives, because the baseline changes depending on which Shift is installed:

1. Open Shift and choose About Shift from the Shift menu in the macOS menu bar.
2. A version number starting with 9 means the older build, with the smaller free limits.
3. Anything newer is the rebuilt browser described on the current pricing page.

Someone on v9 who feels boxed in by 2 Spaces may find that the new free plan, with 5 Spaces, already solves the problem. Moving to the new build is cheaper than moving to a different product, so it is worth trying first. The FAQ explains both paths: migrating the existing account, or installing the new version fresh.

Which parts of Shift are easy to drop

Shift does four different jobs in one window, and they are not equally hard to replace:

1. Fixed homes for daily apps. Gmail, Slack, a calendar and a project tool become icons in the same place every day, instead of tabs that drift.
2. Separation between contexts. Spaces keep work, side projects and personal accounts apart.
3. A configurable layout. The Browser Builder and templates let the window be rearranged by dragging.
4. Browser extras. Shift AI, download scanning, Blocker and the carbon-neutral pledge.

The third and fourth jobs are where most people can let go with little cost. A layout is configured once and rarely touched afterwards. An AI assistant with limited free usage can be replaced by any standalone assistant. Ad blocking exists in many forms. These features make a strong first impression, which is why they dominate review pages, but they are not what makes daily work faster.

The first two jobs are different. Losing fixed homes for apps sends daily work back into tab hunting, and the minutes spent looking for the right tab come back immediately. Losing separation is worse: it means signing out of one account to reach another, or opening a new browser profile window for every identity. Count those two things before looking at any product: how many services are opened every working day, and how many of them need more than one account signed in at the same time. Those two numbers decide which free plan runs out first.

Alternatives, by what their free plans count

Each row was checked on the vendor's own site on October 18, 2026:

Tool	Free plan	Paid plan	Trial and refund
Shift	5 Spaces, 10 apps per Space	$199.99 per year or $19.99 per month	14-day refund window
Wavebox	2 groups with 2 apps in each, 1 extension, 1 dashboard	Pro $8.33 per month paid annually; Teams $12.50 per user per month	7-day Pro trial, 30-day money-back guarantee
Rambox	Unlimited apps, up to 2 instances per app	Pro $7.00 per month or $70.00 per year; Teams $14 per user per month from 5 users	30-day Pro trial, no card
Ferdium	Free and open source, no account needed	None	Not applicable
Browser profiles	Free	None	Not applicable

The point of this table is not the prices. Each free plan limits a different thing. Shift limits Spaces times apps. Wavebox limits groups, apps and extensions together, which its own FAQ describes as enough to stay signed in to two Gmail accounts, one for work and one for home. Rambox leaves the number of apps open but allows only 2 instances of each, and keeps Workspaces on Pro.

So the same person can be comfortable on one plan and stuck on another. Four services with three accounts each fits inside Shift's free plan and breaks Rambox's at the third login. Twenty-five services with one account each breaks Shift's free plan in the third Space and fits easily inside Rambox's.

Two notes for anyone still working from an older comparison list. Ferdium's homepage warns that ferdium.org is its only official domain and that other sites using its name may distribute malware. Sidekick, once a common entry in these lists, no longer exists as a standalone product: its old address now forwards to Perplexity's Comet. Longer feature tables for several of these tools are on the Shift comparison page and the Rambox comparison page.

A one-week test that settles the question

Every option above can be tested at no cost: Wavebox gives 7 days of Pro, Rambox gives 30, Shift Free does not expire, and the Advanced refund covers 14 days. The common way to waste those windows is to rebuild the entire setup on the first evening. Hours go into icons and colors, and the week ends without testing the one thing that was in doubt.

A better test loads only the contested part:

1. Accounts. Add just the service that needs several logins and sign in to every account. Leave everything else in the current browser.
2. Extensions. Install the two extensions that would block a switch, usually a password manager and a content blocker. Check they still work after quitting the app.
3. Restarts. Quit and reopen once a day. Sessions that quietly sign out overnight are a daily cost that no pricing page mentions.
4. Notifications. Send a message to the second account and check whether the alert says which account it came in on.
5. Load. Open the real number of apps at once. Shift's 8GB recommendation is a baseline, and twenty open web apps on an older MacBook is the honest stress test.

Before leaving any Chromium browser, export bookmarks to an HTML file and passwords to a CSV file while it is still installed. Both import into other Chromium browsers. Keep the old browser for at least a week as a fallback. A partial setup can be thrown away in a minute, while a full migration done on day one creates pressure to justify it, and that pressure is not evidence.

What to change first

Write down the two numbers: services used daily, and services that need more than one account. If the limit is the number of Spaces, check whether the installed Shift is v9 before buying anything. If the limit is accounts per service, a browser that gives every app its own cookie container, such as SpaceDeck, is one way to handle it, and its plans are listed on Pricing.