AirVPN Vs FastestVPN Comparison: The Information You Need

  • Time to read: 16 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products/services. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

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

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

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication 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 declare to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 details the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 protected and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are readily available; 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 ignore PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trusted. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are dealt with.

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

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

You can keep track of the current 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

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

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service prior to signing up. 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal info 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 information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this information to be deleted 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 determine what kind 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 tactics will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU personal privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater 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 discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security offered.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This means that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best offered. It resembles that of some other providers, however still worth discussing. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The primary data channel utilizes 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 great since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you won’t 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). However 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 main open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the information you need 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 challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, 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 operate on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more given 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 features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t pick 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” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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 displays all available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you may choose 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 selecting 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 shows 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 many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the information they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to 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 competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

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

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its complexity. Remember that the program usually works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to use 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 utilize an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the exact same substantial setup choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have 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 information more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option 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 great, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of personal privacy, leak tests showed 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server places. This may restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but possibly 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal 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 experimentation. This is probably because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal 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 option 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 system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on local 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, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving 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 extremely practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices 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 exceptional option for people who live in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best deal.

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

The current 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide choices 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 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and helpful, however the comprehensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however beginners will have the exact same troubles understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled 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.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great prices. 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 service provider. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints 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 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

The Ultimate VPN Buyer’s Checklist