AirVPN Vs FastestVPN: The Champ Might Shock You

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

While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly 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 activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal 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 use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most protected and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Various 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.

No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has also included 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 quickly change servers as often 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 new tab).

There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily 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 given that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good aspect of 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 business is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They likewise state they stick to EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of personal privacy and data 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 discover who you are. You’ll remain 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 country blocks OpenVPN.

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been examined by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain 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 real email address. That’s fantastic considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you won’t have the ability to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those companies who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Unfortunately, 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 user-friendly 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 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though 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. Most basic 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 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 displays all available servers in the network, together with in-depth details about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Remarkable 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 offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. 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 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 countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By picking a country, you are not right away 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 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 a lot of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals 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 information they could ever desire 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 information.

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel via more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult 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 customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and pick a particular city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using 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 excellent, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop alert, 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 shows 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 competitors since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server areas. This might limit the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much 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 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 used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not 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 United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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, merely since 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 utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly 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 up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device 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 really convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices simultaneously, 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 people who live in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. The majority of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily converted 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 worldwide alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, but the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, including a large FAQs area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but novices will have the same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little 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 usage.

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

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use 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 choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. But even new users might 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 better results than much of its competing VPN competitors.

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

Although it might not ensure the very same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good choice 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 best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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