AirVPN Vs CyberGhost Comparison: A Comprehensive Overview Of Pros & Cons

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

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

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. 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 claim to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small 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 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 business’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These include an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

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

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its outstanding performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no 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 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. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

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

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

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

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

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people 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 company is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

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

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

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before signing up.

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best offered. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, but still worth mentioning. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The main data channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). But even if the federal 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. Sadly, despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 protected tunnel. Many 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just 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 comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, 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 understand whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page shows the number 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 indicator is likewise revealed. 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as numerous nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By picking a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).

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

While many apps show 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Lastly, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should 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 knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program typically functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide 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 extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

Separate 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 pick a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still rather challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever need. The software application also tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests revealed 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.

Because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually 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 video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server locations. This may restrict the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, 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 seldom work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good 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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent option for people who reside in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. The majority of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships provide the very 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 transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The present plans offered are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the coupon code they send you.

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data 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 support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

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

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, consisting of a big FAQs area that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the very same problems understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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 installation and usage.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly 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 too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, 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 provider. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its competing VPN competitors.

This VPN service is more focused on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

It may not ensure the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for consumers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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