AirVPN Vs CyberGhost Comparison: Are Either Really Worth The Money? (5 Thoughts)

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

While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment 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 anyone can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. 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 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 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer an accurate evaluation 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and secure method 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. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns 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 current load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

There is a comprehensive 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 gain access to points.

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

A great feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request this info to be erased 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 determine what sort 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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

They also state they follow EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection provided.

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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before registering.

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest offered. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s great given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you will not have the ability to change 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 countries that share intelligence data). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to give 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information 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 easy to use interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

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

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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. Many basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish 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 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, along with in-depth information about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

This tab also 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 glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. Many 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 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 country will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a particular nation. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

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 the majority of apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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 downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

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

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really competent user can enter 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 huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. However, if you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

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

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more understandable, but it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever require. The software likewise attempts a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In terms of personal 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.

Due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for most people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, 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 quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Certainly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to jump through. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 decent speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at the same time (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 exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

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

This makes it an exceptional choice for individuals who reside in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for most people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The existing 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 international choices 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 voucher code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, however the thorough responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, including a big FAQs area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however beginners will have the very same difficulties comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Good rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located 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, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly 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. However even brand-new users might 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 many of its rival VPN rivals.

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

Although it may not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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