Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you.
While anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
During the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These include an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.
AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reputable and safe method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other risky protocols.
No preference is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.
AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can monitor the current load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great thing about this is that you can see what other people state about the service prior to registering. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual information logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.
AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they follow EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection offered.
If your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.
Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This indicates that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest readily available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t have the ability to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). But even if the government requested user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t operate on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.
The Servers page shows all readily available servers in the network, along with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page displays the number of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.
A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might choose as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By picking a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a particular country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “indication out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab shows a simple throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
Lastly, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel via more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to determine what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.
Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you don’t want to use Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.
How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the very same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.
Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of personal privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Undoubtedly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.
While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and scenarios like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server locations. This might restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN uses a broader variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.
The present plans readily available are:
Three days- EUR2
One month – EUR7
Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month
Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month
One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month
Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month
Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month
AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers email assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are practical and friendly, but the thorough responses can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, consisting of a big FAQs section that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however novices will have the exact same troubles understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.
Strong security on apps and servers alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.
Network Lock/Kill Switch.
Split tunneling.
Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.
Supports Tor over VPN.
Easy app setup and use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Strong Customer Care.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent prices, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t really easy to use or attractive like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are too many advanced options.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But even brand-new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its rival VPN competitors.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it may not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good choice for consumers who value their privacy.
While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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