AirVPN Vs Hide.Me: Which Is Far Better? (2022 Compared)

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect option for you if yes.

While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site 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 claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

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

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise 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 dependable and safe and secure way 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 hazardous protocols.

No preference is given to any protocol, service, 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 usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.

You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

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

All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. However looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. 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?

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute concern, 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 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 improve services, however you can request for this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

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

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without stressing over your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also say they stick to EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security provided.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service before registering.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best available. It resembles that of some other suppliers, however still worth mentioning. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real email address. That’s terrific given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not have the ability to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable 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 work on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. The majority of standard 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page shows all offered servers in the network, together with in-depth 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 also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign 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 country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might select as lots of nations as you like.

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

By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick 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 also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays a basic 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 existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable 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 permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use 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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely competent user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you search for them. If you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive configuration options 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 nation and select a specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still rather difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying 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 shows 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 due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other regions.

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 used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty 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 US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs lengthy trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. 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 quick download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best deal.

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 easily converted to and paid 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 worldwide options are also 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 coupon code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout 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 offers email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

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

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

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted 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 Support.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s plainly tailored 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. However 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 many of its competing VPN competitors.

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

It might not guarantee the very same level of personal 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 a good alternative for customers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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