AirVPN Vs Avast VPN: The Smart Option Is

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best option for you if yes.

While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but 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 years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These include an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread across 23 nations.

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely 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 protected and dependable 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. So ignore PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

No preference is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place till a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are dealt with.

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

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

You can keep track of the existing 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 information like the offered 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, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being provided will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before 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?

When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN 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 information” to keep the server running and improve 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, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they abide by EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection provided.

If your ISP or nation blocks 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 current users are saying about the service before signing up.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you won’t have the ability 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 data). But even if the government requested for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, in spite of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.

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

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. There are builds for different 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 new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually 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, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Even though it specifies “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. Most basic 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present 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 shows the variety of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also 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 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 basically a favorites list; you may select as many countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate 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 an easy throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While a lot of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

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

Finally, Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it must 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 really competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge function 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 preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program usually works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. If you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not 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 utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough 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 require. The software application also attempts a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing 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 discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests showed 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.

Because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

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

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server places. This may restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for many people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty bad 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 United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not use 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.

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

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

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct 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 extremely practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN uses a broader range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices 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 exceptional option for people who reside in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the best deal.

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

The existing 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 also 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 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 Assistance

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, however the extensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those 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 several topics, but novices will have the exact same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited 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 installation and usage.

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

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly 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 supplier. However even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it might not guarantee the very same level of 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 alternative for customers 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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