AirVPN Vs FastestVPN Comparison – 5 Pros & Cons You Should Learn In 2022

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

While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts 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 special these days, when it comes to VPN providers, 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 small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously 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 bigger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information 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 providing a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up versus its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide a precise assessment of performance, with no 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and protected method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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 risky protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

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

A good thing about this is that you can see what other people say 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 concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with security 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among 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 fretting about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also say they comply with EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very 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 use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level protection offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to signing up.

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve 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 e-mail address. That’s fantastic since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not have the ability to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for 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 major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as great as those suppliers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. 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 present does not work on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN provides 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 enables you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 tunnel. Most standard kill switches just 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 just 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 available servers in the network, together with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers offered in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. 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 essentially a favorites list; you might select as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a nation, 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 a lot of apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

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

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

This permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

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

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the very same extensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and choose a particular city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still rather tough to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, 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 reveals 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 reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually remarkable overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and situations like HD streaming, video, and gaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server places. This might limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, however possibly 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.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 decent speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at the same time (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget 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 hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 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 choice for people who reside in a family house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be quickly converted to and spent for in the currency of your option.

The existing 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 global alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the coupon 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 support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and practical, but the detailed responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, consisting of a big FAQs section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the exact same difficulties understanding 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 choices in the client app.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even new users could 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 much of its competing VPN competitors.

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

Although it may not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and privacy 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 consumers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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