AirVPN Vs AVG VPN Comparison – Are They Any Good? Website Beginner’s Candid View

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

While anyone can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. Right 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 anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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).

Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and trustworthy 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. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it boils down to it, no preference is given to any protocol, application, or service. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are addressed.

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

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

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

There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info 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, however since there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals 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 concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this information 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 tell what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without stressing over 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 due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they comply with EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

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

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a third party.

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

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not be able to change 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). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to give 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. Regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use user 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 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 explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Even though it defines “kill switch” anywhere in 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 protected tunnel. A lot of 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 shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive details about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be 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 essentially a favorites list; you might select as numerous nations as you like.

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

By picking a country, you are not right away 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 a lot of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, 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 ability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

Logs is an in-depth 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 fine-tune 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 attempt an SSH tunnel by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to utilize 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 incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful 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 choose a particular city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the info more reasonable, but it’s still rather 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 much more than most people will ever need. The software also tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal 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.

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

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

While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and circumstances like HD gaming, streaming, and video conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server places. This may limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however maybe 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor 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 United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

Nevertheless, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because 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. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

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

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

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, 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 concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five 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 excellent option for people who live in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates varies based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Many plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the best deal.

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

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 global 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 using the discount coupon code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

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

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but beginners will have the same difficulties understanding a great deal 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 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.

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good prices, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

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

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

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

It might not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great choice for consumers who value their personal 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 option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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