AirVPN Vs Avira VPN Comparison 2022: The Good & Bad (Honest Thoughts)

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

While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually 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 supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

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

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any 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 reliable and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides 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. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.

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

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

You can keep an eye on the present 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 details like the available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about 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 comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual info 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 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without fretting about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your 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 only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they abide by EU personal privacy guidelines 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 learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security provided.

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 existing users are stating about the service before signing up.

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best readily available. It resembles that of some other suppliers, however still worth mentioning. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The main data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user details, 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, available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN offers 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 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” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Most basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 displays all available servers in the network, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. 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 essentially a favorites list; you may select as many countries as you like.

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

By selecting 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 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 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 downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

This permits 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. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the exact same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more understandable, but 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 many more than the majority of people will ever need. The software application also attempts a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop alert, 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable 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 scenarios like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might restrict 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 most people in the United States and Europe, but 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 actually 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.

Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t 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, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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.

Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on 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 choice 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 Web.

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

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a wider range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Many plans offer good value; however, longer memberships offer the best deal.

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

The present 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 options 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 also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not 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 many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are helpful and friendly, but the thorough answers can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, consisting of a large FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however novices will have the exact same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great rates, 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 extremely easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

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

While it could be challenging to utilize 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 securing your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

It may not ensure 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 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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