AirVPN Review: Is It Even Better Than SurfShark?

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

While anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, stating, “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 nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread across 23 nations.

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known 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 totally unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily 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 risky protocols.

When it boils down to it, no preference is given to any application, protocol, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are attended to.

AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily switch servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep an eye on the current load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the 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, however since there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They likewise state they follow EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of personal privacy and information 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 find out who you are. You’ll remain 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 forum enable you to get a sense of what present users are stating about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This indicates that anyone 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 third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, however still worth mentioning. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). Even if the federal government asked for user details, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for various operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference 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 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 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive information about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Remarkable 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 offered in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of countries as you like.

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

By choosing 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 particular country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking 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 also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays an easy 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 most apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it ought to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you try to find them. If you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer 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 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 extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the exact same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult 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 also attempts a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting 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 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.

Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent 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 scenarios like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server locations. This may limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps 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 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.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Fortunately, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

However, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal 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 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 up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device 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 convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for people who reside in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The present plans offered 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 alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, but the extensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little 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 usage.

Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.

Strong Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or pretty like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great 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 service provider. Even new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and better results than a lot of its competing VPN competitors.

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

Although it may not guarantee the 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 an excellent alternative for consumers who value their privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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