Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the ideal option for you if yes.
While anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.
AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anybody can declare to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).
Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques 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 secure and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous 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 hazardous protocols.
When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, application, or protocol. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.
AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.
You can keep an eye on the existing load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, but because 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 detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.
A great feature of 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?
The business is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.
AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without stressing over your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise state they adhere to EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection offered.
If your ISP or country obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies 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 checked by a 3rd party.
Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, however still worth mentioning. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you do not utilize one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the federal government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those providers who utilize it as standard.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t operate on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
2 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.
Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. Many standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just shows 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 displays all offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Numerous 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 discovered 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 select as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a specific country. 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 likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.
The Speed tab displays a basic 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 the majority of apps display 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, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Lastly, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel through more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the huge function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.
However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not want 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 application offers the same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and handy status info.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the info more reasonable, but it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever need. The software also tries a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed 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 competitors since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
However, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and situations like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server locations. This may limit the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the huge 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server requires lengthy trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
The good news is, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
However, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving 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, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an exceptional choice for individuals who reside in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Rates varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily converted to and spent for in the currency of your option.
The current plans 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 international options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the 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 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 does not have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the email support is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, including a large FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but beginners will have the very same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with very little loss.
Unlimited 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 options in the client app.
Solid Customer Care.
Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent costs, particularly 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 very user-friendly or pretty like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.
Found in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. However even brand-new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than a lot of its rival VPN rivals.
When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
It might not ensure the very same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great choice 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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AirVPN Vs StrongVPN Comparison (2022) – 1 Clear-Cut Top Dog
