AirVPN Vs Hide.Me Comparison 2022: Tested Them For 3 Years Here Are The End Results

  • 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 wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best solution for you.

While anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anybody can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider 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 years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.

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

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of 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 decreases the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide a precise assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no 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 dependable and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. In addition, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reliable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are attended to.

AirVPN has also added 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 change servers as frequently as you like.

You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous issues 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 readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (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 need to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people say about the service before registering. You don’t have 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 company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal information 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

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

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 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 also say they comply with EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater 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 nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection offered.

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

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

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest offered. The very first exchange uses 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 information, not even your real email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able 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). However even if the federal government requested user information, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

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. Despite Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

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

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. 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’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. The majority of 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Impressive 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 offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Lots of 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 country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as numerous nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, successfully 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. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose the server you want in a particular nation. 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 likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows 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 the majority of apps show 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

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

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

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to find out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you occasionally 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application provides the very same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status details.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the info more reasonable, but it’s still quite challenging 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 require. The software likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using 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, 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 competitors because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have 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 excellent 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 gaming, streaming, and video conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server places. This may limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. However, 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 right server requires prolonged experimentation. This is most likely since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

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 decent speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 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, triggered by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending 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 revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a broader variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 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 outstanding choice for people who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions use the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices 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 using the discount coupon 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, consisting of a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, but beginners will have the exact same problems comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent 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 setup and use.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really user-friendly 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.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. 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 supplier. But even new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN competitors.

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

It might not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for customers who value their privacy.

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs NordVPN Pricing: A Thorough Guide For 2022