AirVPN Vs FastVPN: Find Out About The Main Differences

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

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

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site 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 anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly 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).

Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed 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 created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread across 23 nations.

Many servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 trustworthy method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides 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 unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and privacy problems are attended to.

AirVPN has likewise 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 change servers as often as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server details (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 rely on that what is being provided will work. However looking at the active community forum or the in-depth 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 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 pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this information to be deleted 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 figure out what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

They also state they abide by EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection supplied.

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

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

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, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s great since 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 do not use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies 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.

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. There are builds for various 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 explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not function on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 tunnel. The majority of basic 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 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 readily available servers in the network, together with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator 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 found 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 might select as many countries as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not instantly 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 most apps display your present 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 a lot more.

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

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

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

The really skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the huge function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. If you periodically yearn 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 incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the exact same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Separate 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 specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the info more reasonable, but it’s still rather 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 a lot more than most people will ever need. The software likewise attempts a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering 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 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.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Undoubtedly, one said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This may restrict the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most 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 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 pretty poor 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 US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use 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 inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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 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 Web.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables 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 integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving 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 very convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN uses a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 individuals who reside in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

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

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

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 global alternatives 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 voucher 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and handy, however the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a large Frequently asked questions section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however beginners will have the exact same difficulties comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P permitted 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 Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good prices, 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 extremely user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably 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 excellent prices. It’s clearly 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 service provider. Even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

It might not guarantee the exact same level of 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 a great alternative for customers 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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