AirVPN Vs IPVanish: 5 Tests To Decide “Who’s Number 1” In 2022?

  • Time to read: 15 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 want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best option for you.

While anybody can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

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

Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reputable and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are offered; 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. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

AirVPN has 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 switch servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people state about the service prior to signing up. 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?

The company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this details to be erased 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics 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 likewise say they comply with EU 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 conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection provided.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community 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 huge plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best offered. It’s similar to that of some other providers, however still worth pointing out. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. There are builds for various operating 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t operate on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial 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 choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout 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 protected tunnel. A lot of 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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 readily available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Excellent stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each nation at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Many 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as many countries as you like.

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

By picking a nation, you are not immediately 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 displays a basic 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 a lot of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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 much 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 particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

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

The really competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast function 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 outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to utilize 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 use a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the very same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status details.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and choose a specific city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more understandable, but it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects rapidly and is ready to enter 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 notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed 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 since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, 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 remarkable overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server areas. This may restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for most people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

The good news is, 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.

Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve 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 Internet.

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 exiting 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 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 problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent option for people who live in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

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

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 easily 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide options 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 using the coupon code they send you.

There’s also 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 Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance 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 reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are helpful and friendly, however the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, consisting of a large FAQs section that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however beginners will have the exact same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon 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 options in the client app.

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great 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 company. Even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it might not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good choice for customers who value their privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs AVG VPN: The Ultimate Buyer’s Checklist