AirVPN Vs ExpressVPN: The Prizewinner Might Shock You

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

While anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 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 currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

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

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

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and dependable way 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. So forget PPTP and other risky protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly trusted. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy issues are resolved.

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 switch servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep an eye on 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details 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 given that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. However looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual details 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this info 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 tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 methods will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher 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 utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-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 present users are saying about the service prior to signing up.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not have the ability to alter your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). However even if the government asked for user details, 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. Despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.

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 easy to use user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap 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 discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘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, but 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

Two crucial 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 choose 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” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. The majority of standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all readily available servers in the network, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers readily available in each nation at a glance, 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 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as numerous nations as you like.

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

By picking 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 a simple 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 the majority of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, 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 use a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it must constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program typically works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want 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 offers the very same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and handy 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 pick a particular city on the very same page. Some valuable text additions make the info more understandable, however it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever need. The software likewise attempts a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

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

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server places. This might restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t 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 needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several 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 decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent option for people who live in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions provide the very best deal.

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

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 options 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 using the coupon code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are practical and friendly, however the comprehensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but newbies will have the exact same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited 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 options in the client app.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. However even new users could 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 much of its competing VPN competitors.

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

It might not ensure the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Vs ExpressVPN Comparison 2022: Comprehensive Comparison