AirVPN Vs Hide.Me Comparison (2022) – 1 Obvious Champion

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

While anybody can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting 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 anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of variety of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

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

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most protected and reputable method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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 risky protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are resolved.

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

Switching is unlimited, 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 problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to signing up. You do not have 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 outright 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 doesn’t 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 improve services, but you can ask for this information to be erased 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 tell what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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 data.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies 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 state they stick to EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of 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 find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection 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 saying about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This means 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 checked by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. The 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 real email address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you do not utilize 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 provide them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a ton of download alternatives. There are builds for various running 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe 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 just 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 offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive info about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present 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 displays the variety 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 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might select as numerous 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 country, click the empty box.

By picking a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a specific country. Then, 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). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows an easy 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 most apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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 far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the details they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless 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 use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will supply 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 a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the exact same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and choose a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the details more reasonable, however it’s still quite challenging to understand 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 require. The software likewise tries a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

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

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server locations. This may restrict the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many 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 TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, 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, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

However, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated 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. A number of 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 regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five devices at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for people who reside in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Many plans provide good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best offer.

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

The present plans offered 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 international options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s also 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 many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, but the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo 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 installation and use.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great prices, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really 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.

Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those 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 utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than much of its rival VPN rivals.

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

Although it might not guarantee the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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