Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.
While anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right 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 distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider 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).
Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger business either.
Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread across 23 nations.
Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their privacy.
That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.
They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.
To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reliable and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.
Many ports and protocols are readily 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 hazardous protocols.
No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.
The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.
AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the current load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server information (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 rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed 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 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?
The company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with security 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 does not 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 enhance services, but you can request for 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 tell what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer 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 only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also say they comply with EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection supplied.
If your ISP or nation 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 current users are stating about the service before registering.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates that anybody 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 inspected by a 3rd party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best available. It resembles that of some other providers, but still worth discussing. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The main data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s terrific since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations 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 main open-source application, readily available on all major 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 excellent as those providers who use it as requirement.
Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.
There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for various 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 explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not function on your setup.
After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 essential AirVPN functions 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” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches only 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 displays all offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!
This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.
The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may choose as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By choosing a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose the server you want in a specific 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 simple 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 show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, present 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 capability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.
A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.
If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.
However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program normally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. If you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not want to use 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 use a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the exact same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and handy status info.
Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the details more understandable, however it’s still rather difficult to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software also attempts a little bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.
Speeds/Performance
Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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.
Since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.
Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.
While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing definitely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a broader variety of server locations. This may limit the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of 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 Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.
Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires prolonged experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.
Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on 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 utilize port forwarding to enhance 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, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading 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 will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 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 outstanding choice for people who live in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.
Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans provide good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and spent for in the currency of your option.
The current plans 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 global alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.
AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the voucher code they send you.
There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Support
AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That said, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are helpful and friendly, however the thorough answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by subject.
AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the same troubles understanding 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 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 usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.
Solid Client Service.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Good rates, particularly for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists protect you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or attractive like other services.
Client app may overwhelm newer 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 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 rates. 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 service provider. However even brand-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 better results than many of its competing VPN rivals.
When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
Although it may not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good 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 very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional choice for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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