AirVPN Vs Avast VPN: Uncover The Major Differences

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you if yes.

While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins 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 anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 bigger company either.

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

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

So how does AirVPN compare to its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no 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 safe and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, 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 service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.

AirVPN has actually likewise added 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 change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (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 given that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being offered will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great feature of this is that you can see what other people state 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this info to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine 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 system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also state they abide by EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN.

Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest readily available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through 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 given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the details you need 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 does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for various 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more considering 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 features 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 distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. Most basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

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

The Overview 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 readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as many countries as you like.

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

By picking a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a particular nation. 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 shows 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 most apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the information they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Lastly, 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 enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel via more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go 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 vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will offer 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 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 use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application supplies the very same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status details.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the details more understandable, but it’s still rather challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

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

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could 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 the majority of people, and situations like HD gaming, streaming, and video conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server areas. This may limit the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of 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 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 utilized 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. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is probably because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

However, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just 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 improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 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, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an exceptional option for people who live in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best offer.

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

The current plans readily 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 global alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

There’s also 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 support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a very active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, but the comprehensive answers can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, consisting of a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but novices will have the same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on servers and apps alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and use.

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

Strong Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Excellent prices, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really user-friendly 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.

Possibly there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s clearly geared 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. But even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

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

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

Highly recommended!

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