AirVPN Vs IPVanish: The Prizewinner Might Shock You

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

While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier 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).

During the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has established 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 created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.

Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its outstanding performance throughout its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply a precise 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 utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trusted and safe and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous 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. So ignore PPTP and other risky protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, application, or service. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reliable. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the 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 have to trust 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 nice feature of this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. You do not need 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 business is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve 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, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They also say they follow EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security supplied.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service prior to registering.

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. It’s similar to that of some other service providers, but still worth mentioning. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish 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 reduce this value. The primary information 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 great since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t have the ability to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). However even if the government requested for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, 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 doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. The majority of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but 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 just 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, along with detailed details about each one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers readily available in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. 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 found 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 basically a favorites list; you might pick as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, 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 shows 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 the majority of apps show your present 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.

Lastly, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other 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 difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program usually functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software supplies the same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status details.

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 choose a specific city on the exact same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever need. The software also attempts a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive overall.

While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This may restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly 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 pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just 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 badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a larger range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional choice for people who reside in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the coupon 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, but the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the exact same difficulties understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 installation and usage.

Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Excellent prices, 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 easy to use or pretty 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 too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But even new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its competing VPN competitors.

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

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

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

Highly recommended!

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