Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal option for you.
While anybody can claim to be special these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding 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 declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 larger company either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed 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 designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.
The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no 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 safe and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.
When it boils down to it, no preference is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. The lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are attended to.
AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.
You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues 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 offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (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 because there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. However taking a look 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 people say about the service before registering. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is very clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request this info 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 determine what type 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 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 since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they abide by EU personal privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and information 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 discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security offered.
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 existing users are saying about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests 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 been examined by a 3rd party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best offered. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, but still worth mentioning. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not 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 countries that share intelligence data). But even if the government asked for user details, 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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those companies who use it as requirement.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for various 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not operate on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 protected tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview 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 available servers in the network, together with comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Numerous 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may pick as lots of countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you desire in a particular nation. 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 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 display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, 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 a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the various locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.
Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other data.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to fine-tune 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 attempt 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 truly experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.
If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you try to find them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.
Suppose you do not 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?
There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and useful status info.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and choose a particular city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, but 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 a lot more than most people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In regards to personal privacy, leak tests revealed 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.
Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Certainly, 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 quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video gaming, video, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server locations. This might restrict the availability of neighboring 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 perhaps less so for other areas.
Streaming
Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. 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 seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several 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 as much as 20 ports simultaneously (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 obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget 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 really convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN provides a wider variety of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five gadgets simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who live in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for many people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Pricing varies based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily transformed to and spent for in the currency of your option.
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, consisting of 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 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and practical, however the comprehensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, including a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however beginners will have the exact same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited P2P enabled 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 Service.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent rates, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t very 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.
Perhaps there are a lot of advanced options.
Located in 14-Eyes Nation.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s clearly geared 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 could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its competing VPN competitors.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on securing your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it may not ensure 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 an excellent option for customers who value their personal privacy.
While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s definitely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!
AirVPN Review 2022 – We Tested To See How Secure It Really Is
