AirVPN Vs Hide.Me Comparison 2022: We Have A Clear Winner!

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

While anybody can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “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 nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information 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 non-traditional 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 personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely 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 dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are 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. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place up until some of its technical and privacy issues are attended to.

AirVPN has actually also 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 an eye on the current load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available 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, but since there is no third-party audit, you have 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 good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 methods will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they stick to EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain 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 nation obstructs OpenVPN.

Open-source clients and a lively community 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 big plus. This indicates that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. The very first exchange uses 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 details, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

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

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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for different 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 existing doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, but 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 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. Most 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 shows all available servers in the network, together with in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as many countries as you like.

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

By picking a nation, 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 shows 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 a lot of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, current 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 details they might ever want about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

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

The genuinely skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you try to find them. However, if you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish 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 an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the information more understandable, 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 also attempts a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, informing 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 just supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server locations. This may restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks 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 deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs lengthy experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

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 nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 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 built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a larger variety of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five 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 outstanding choice for individuals who live in a household house or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for most people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Many plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the best deal.

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

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 global options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, however the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, including a large Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however novices will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent 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 use.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent costs, especially 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 very easy to use or attractive 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.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably 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 prices. It’s clearly 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 company. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although 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 permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for customers who value their 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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