Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best service for you if yes.
While anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.
AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of variety of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.
That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate assessment 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 protected and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Various ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No choice is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place up until a few of its technical and privacy issues are dealt with.
AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present 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 specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. However looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A good aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual info 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this details to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they comply with EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security supplied.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best readily available. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s great since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you do not use one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to provide them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those companies who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.
Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not operate on your setup.
After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview simply 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 offered servers in the network, in addition to detailed details about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current users and server load. Outstanding stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.
A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as numerous countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By selecting a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a specific nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab displays 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 display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and much more.
Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.
Lastly, Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.
This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it ought to always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.
If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you don’t wish to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send out 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 use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the exact same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status details.
Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a specific city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to go in 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 notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.
Now let’s get to those speeds.
Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually remarkable 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 streaming, gaming, and video conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might restrict the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other regions.
Streaming
Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Fortunately, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
However, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Indeed, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to jump through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.
File sharing has decent 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, activated by default, will block all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN provides a larger variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. The majority of plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and spent for in the currency of your choice.
The current 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global choices are likewise 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 also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and practical, however the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however newbies will have the same problems understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with very little loss.
Unrestricted P2P enabled 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 installation and use.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Solid Client Service.
Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.
Good rates, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s plainly geared 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. Even new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than many of its competing VPN rivals.
When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it might not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.
While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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