AirVPN Vs CyberGhost: Which One Should You Pick? (2022)

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

While anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “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 unique these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider 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).

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

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

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and personal privacy issues are dealt with.

AirVPN has also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a comprehensive specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (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 need to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual information 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 information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this information to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

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

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

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

They likewise say they follow EU personal 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 find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security supplied.

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

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

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the very best readily available. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth mentioning. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to provide them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, despite Eddie’s considerable 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 easy, and it has all the information you require to connect to a VPN.

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

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for numerous 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 existing doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re completed, you just click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout 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 tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 offered servers in the network, together with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Numerous 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

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

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

While most apps display your current 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

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 utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel by means of more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast feature 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 differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. However, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send 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 offers the very same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the info more easy to understand, however it’s still rather challenging to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects quickly 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, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals 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 competitors.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server places. This might limit the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, 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 U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant 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, finding the right server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, 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. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

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

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

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 live in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. Many plans provide good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.

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

The present plans available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

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

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

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

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

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

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

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using 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 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 (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, including a big Frequently asked questions section that is separated by topic.

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and use.

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

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really 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.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great 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 company. Even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

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

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

Highly recommended!

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