AirVPN Vs Avira VPN Comparison: Are Either Worth The Money? (5 Thoughts)

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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 declare to be special these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 declare to be special these days, when it comes to 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 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).

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

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has developed 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 designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 reputable 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. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The absence 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 won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and privacy issues 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 do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, but considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to 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?

The company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this info to be erased 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 determine what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

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

They also state they comply with EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and data 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 stay safe with the top-level protection offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service prior to registering.

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

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

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful 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 countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to offer them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, in spite 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 utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Unfortunately, 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 user interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download alternatives. 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not work on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Even though it defines “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. The majority 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just 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 available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. 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 discovered 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 pick as many nations as you like.

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

By picking a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays an easy throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While most apps show your present 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 downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use 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 an invaluable resource.

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

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it must constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program typically operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. However, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and practical status info.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the info more easy to understand, however it’s still quite challenging 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 many people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects rapidly 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 notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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 competitors since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server areas. This may limit the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most 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 Television, 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow 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 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’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

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

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

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than many 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 option for individuals who live 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 provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best deal.

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

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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide alternatives are likewise 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 likewise 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 lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very 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 irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and practical, however the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, including a large FAQs area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but newbies will have the same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and usage.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with good rates. It’s plainly 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 supplier. But even brand-new users could 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 better results than a lot of its rival VPN competitors.

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

Although it might not ensure the 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 option for customers who value their privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

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