AirVPN Review – 9 Pros & 2 Cons You Ought To Find Out In 2022

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the ideal service for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be special these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right 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 anybody can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established 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 providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of variety of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no speed restrictions 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 trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous 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.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are attended to.

AirVPN has actually also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep track of 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 brand-new tab).

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to registering. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

The company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal info 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without worrying about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they comply with EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection provided.

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 present users are saying about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest available. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real email address. That’s excellent given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful 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). But even if the government requested user info, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, regardless of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for various running 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Many standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however 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 six 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 displays all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Remarkable 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 number of servers offered in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Numerous 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 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 may pick as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a specific nation. 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated info 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 the majority of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other information.

This allows 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. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to use 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 utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the very same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more easy to understand, but it’s still rather difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of personal 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Certainly, one stated 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 at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server locations. This might limit the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 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 US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not use 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 examine to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

However, streaming is absolutely 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. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve 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 good speeds on regional servers, allows 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 integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a larger variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for people who reside in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The existing 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the coupon code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, however the thorough answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however novices will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P permitted 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.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great rates, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s clearly 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 provider. But even new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its rival VPN rivals.

When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

It may not ensure the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent choice for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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