AirVPN Vs Hide.Me Comparison 2022: Extensive Comparison

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

While anybody can declare to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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 bigger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed 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 supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trusted and protected way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other risky protocols.

When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, application, or protocol. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has actually likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to registering. 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?

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual details 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of 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 stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics 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 adhere to EU personal privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before signing up.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest offered. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able 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 nations that share intelligence information). However even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

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. Regardless of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as great as those providers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for various 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that 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 allows you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t select 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 same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish 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 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 offered servers in the network, together with in-depth details about every one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Outstanding 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 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 indicator is also shown. Numerous 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 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 basically a favorites list; you might select as numerous nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By picking a country, 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 the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise 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 displays a simple 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 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, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

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

Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it must always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its complexity. Remember that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you try to find them. If you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want to utilize 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and handy status details.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and choose a specific city on the same page. Some useful text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still rather difficult to understand 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 require. The software also tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

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

In regards to 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 because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding 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 gaming, streaming, and video conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server areas. This might limit the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective 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 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Nevertheless, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

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’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on regional 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 device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than many 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 exceptional choice for people who reside in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing differs based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best offer.

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

The present 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international alternatives are likewise 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 utilizing the voucher code they send you.

There’s also 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 assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

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

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but newbies will have the same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on apps and servers 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 options in the client app.

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or pretty 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.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. 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 service provider. But even new users could do much, much worse.

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

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 ensure the exact 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 a good option for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it does not 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 option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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