AirVPN Vs AVG VPN Comparison: Do I Highly Recommend Them?

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

While anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website 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 anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained 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 developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply a precise assessment of performance, with no 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and trustworthy method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack 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 fully in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are attended to.

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

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily change servers as often as you like.

You can keep an eye on 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 detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily 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, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. However looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this details to be erased 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 tell what kind 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also say they abide by EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide 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 online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge 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 perhaps the best offered. It’s similar to that of some other companies, however still worth mentioning. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The main data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

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

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

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 significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial AirVPN functions 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 chosen last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has 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 safe tunnel. The majority of 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 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 shows all available servers in the network, together with detailed info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise 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 discovered 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 may select as many countries as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you want in a particular country. Then, 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows a simple 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 many apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, 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 details they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

Finally, 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 enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to attempt an SSH tunnel through more flexible 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 allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what particular 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 even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. If you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want 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?

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

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 select a specific city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever require. The software likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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 competitors since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server places. This may limit the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in 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 areas.

Streaming

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

Indeed, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not work with any of the significant 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

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

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

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

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships use the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to provide 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free 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 likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data throughout 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 uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are practical and friendly, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the exact same problems comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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 setup and use.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t 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.

Perhaps there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

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

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

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

It may not guarantee the exact same level of 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 choice 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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