AirVPN Vs Avast VPN: Great VPNs Reviewed

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

While anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. Right 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 distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however 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 company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established 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 supplying a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up versus its rivals with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of variety of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 trusted way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, 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 highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as often 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 new tab).

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

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

A good thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to registering. 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal 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 data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this info to be deleted 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 determine what kind 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 comply with EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of privacy and information 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 learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection 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 forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means 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 checked by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best readily available. It resembles that of some other companies, however still worth discussing. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s great given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to give 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as standard.

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 direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing 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. Simple enough for anyone, but 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 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked 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 protected tunnel. Most basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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 info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Excellent stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign 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 found 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 essentially a favorites list; you might pick as numerous countries as you like.

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

By picking 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. 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 also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows 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 many apps show 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 downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

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

Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.

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 by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other 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 specialist, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you try to find them. However, if you periodically crave 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more understandable, but it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever need. The software likewise tries a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each option 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 great, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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 just supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. 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 on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

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

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

The good news is, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

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

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than many 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 devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who live in a household home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best deal.

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

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 choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

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

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are valuable and friendly, but the comprehensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the very same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent 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.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t very easy to use 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.

Possibly there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. Even new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its competing VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on protecting your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

It might not ensure the same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative 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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