Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the best solution for you if yes.
While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.
They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company Iridium previously 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained 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 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 the majority of, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.
The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.
That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 dependable and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.
Many 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. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No preference is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are dealt with.
AirVPN has actually likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.
All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive 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 signing up. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal info 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 information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can ask for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.
As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi 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 methods will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they follow EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security provided.
You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN.
Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big 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.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. It resembles that of some other suppliers, but still worth discussing. 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 takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The main data channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s great since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you will not have the ability to change 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 nations that share intelligence information). Even if the federal government asked for user details, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide them.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as standard.
Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, 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 existing doesn’t operate on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.
2 essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.
Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. Most 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 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 readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!
This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you understand whether a server is recommended for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also 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 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 might pick as lots of nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that nation will be gotten rid of, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By selecting a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a particular country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “indication 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info 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 the majority of apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, 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 capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.
Logs is a detailed 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 try an SSH tunnel via more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The truly competent user can enter 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 function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.
Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program usually operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. If you periodically yearn 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 an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status information.
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 pick a specific city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.
Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, 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 excellent. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually excellent overall.
While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and situations like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server areas. This might limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for most people in the United States and Europe, however possibly less so for other regions.
Streaming
Streaming the big 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 utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Indeed, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t 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 United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
Luckily, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Allow P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has 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, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your device 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 very hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Pricing
AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.
This makes it an outstanding option for people who reside in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships provide the very best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your choice.
The existing 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 worldwide options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and 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 throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are helpful and friendly, however the detailed responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions area that is separated by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however newbies will have the exact same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Excellent speeds with minimal loss.
Unlimited 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 usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Solid Customer Support.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Excellent rates, particularly 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 extremely easy to use or pretty like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer users.
It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced choices.
Found in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are fairly low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?
The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. But even new users could do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than a lot of its competing VPN competitors.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it may not guarantee the 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 great alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.
While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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