AirVPN Vs Avira VPN: Which Is A Better Option In 2022?

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Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the best service for you if yes.

While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins 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 claim to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two 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 years, 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 business’s history is discussed and information 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 providing a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Most servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide a precise assessment of performance, without any 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 protected and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are 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. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are addressed.

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

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

You can monitor the current 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 info like the offered 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 because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before signing up. 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 business is very 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 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can ask for this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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

They likewise state they follow EU personal privacy policies and that 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 brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security offered.

If your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.

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

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best available. It resembles that of some other providers, but still worth pointing out. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you won’t have the ability to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). However even if the government requested user information, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

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. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details 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 interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for different running 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 present doesn’t function on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN provides 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 enables you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Many standard 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 offered servers in the network, together with detailed info about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Remarkable 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 readily available in each country at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of 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 might choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

By selecting a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a specific nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “indication 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info 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 a lot of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

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

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This 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 flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

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

Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to use Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send out all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application offers the very same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, 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 because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This may limit the ease of access of close-by 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 perhaps 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 U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged experimentation. This is probably since, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t use 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 examine to see if the situation with these streaming websites 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 privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several 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 good speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, particularly 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 issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN uses a larger variety 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 reside in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for many people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates varies based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. Many plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use 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 option.

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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international 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 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, but the comprehensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but novices will have the exact same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P permitted 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 usage.

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

Solid Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really easy to use or pretty like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. Even 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 number of its competing VPN rivals.

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

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

While it doesn’t 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 excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Review & Test Results – A Solid VPN Alternative?