AirVPN Vs ExpressVPN: Great VPNs Compared

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

While anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 organization either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and dependable way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily 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 unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol fully in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.

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 change servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep track of the present 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 available 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, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on 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 great thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service before 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?

The company is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this details to be erased 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without fretting 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 against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they stick to EU privacy guidelines which 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 brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security provided.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies that anyone can check out 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.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, but still worth pointing out. The 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 minimize this value. The main information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful 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 details, 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 significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t work on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key 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 pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 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 displays all offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might select as many countries as you like.

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

By choosing a country, 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 an easy 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 many apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

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

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

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings till you try to find them. If you periodically yearn for 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the very same substantial configuration 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. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite difficult to understand 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 most people will ever need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

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

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This might restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

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

Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Fortunately, 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.

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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 poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

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

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best deal.

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

The current 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global options are also 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 discount 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 Assistance

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

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

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, but novices will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P allowed 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.

Strong Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. But even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it might not guarantee 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 choice 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 best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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