AirVPN Vs IPVanish Comparison (2022) – 1 Clear Top Dog

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

While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, but 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.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of variety of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its outstanding performance across its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trusted and protected way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No preference is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are attended to.

AirVPN has actually also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other people say 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 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 among 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 using.

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

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

They likewise state they abide by EU privacy regulations which 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 use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection supplied.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best offered. It resembles that of some other providers, but still worth discussing. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce 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 email address. That’s excellent because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However know that you won’t have the ability to alter 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 nations that share intelligence data). However even if the government requested for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Sadly, 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 easy to use interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. 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 explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not work on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Even though it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up 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 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, along with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Lots of 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 may select as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you desire in a specific nation. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays an easy 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 the majority 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 uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the details they might ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

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

The truly skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to determine what particular 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 since of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program typically functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you search for them. However, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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?

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

Different pages for nation 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 specific city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the details more easy to understand, but it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than most people will ever require. The software likewise tries a bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

Using 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 excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

Because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really remarkable overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This might restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. However, it appears to deal 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, finding the right server requires prolonged experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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 utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on regional 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 integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices 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 family house or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The current 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide choices 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 voucher 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 used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are practical and friendly, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, including a large FAQs area that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed 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.

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those 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 receive much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its rival VPN competitors.

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

Although it may not guarantee the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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