AirVPN Vs Avast VPN Comparison: Are Either Worth The Money? (5 Thoughts)

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal service for you.

While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins 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 unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. 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 currently 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 organization 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 created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 dependable and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are offered; 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 preference is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till some of its technical and privacy problems are addressed.

AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

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

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

There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, but because there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to signing up. 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 extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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, however you can request for this info to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer 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 just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also say they follow EU privacy policies which 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 utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security offered.

If your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service prior to registering.

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those service providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for numerous running 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 secure tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches only 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 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 shows all offered servers in the network, together with comprehensive details about each one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing 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 readily available in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise shown. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. 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).

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 present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

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

Logs is a detailed 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 tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want to utilize 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and handy status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, however 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 much more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application also tries a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and situations like HD streaming, video, and gaming conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server areas. This may restrict the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.

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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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.

Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 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 gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. 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 outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN uses a wider range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who live in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans offer good value; however, longer memberships use the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and paid 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 also 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 utilizing the discount 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 used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

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

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with minimal 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 usage.

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

Solid Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, 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 extremely easy to use or pretty like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. 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 much better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.

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

Although it may not guarantee the 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 great option for consumers who value their 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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