AirVPN Vs Le VPN: The Victor May Surprise You

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the ideal solution for you if yes.

While anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands out 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 anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals 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 help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

During the last decade, 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 business’s history is described and details 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 offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of variety of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any 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 reliable and safe and secure way 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. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any service, protocol, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

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

You can keep an eye on the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, 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 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, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. However looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with defense 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 doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this information 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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 versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they follow EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

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

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 allow you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest available. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your genuine email address. That’s great considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However know that you won’t have the ability to change your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries 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 primary open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, regardless of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide 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 choices. There are builds for numerous running 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 new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not operate 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 ended up. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 and secure tunnel. Most 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, in addition to detailed information about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number 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 also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might pick as many nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not instantly 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 an easy 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 most apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows 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 uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they could ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.

Finally, 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 fine-tune 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 attempt 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 skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same comprehensive setup options as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.

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 nation and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more reasonable, but it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software likewise tries 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 usually connects rapidly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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.

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

Reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server places. This may limit the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks 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. Nevertheless, it appears to deal 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, finding the best server requires lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not use 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 inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Indeed, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct 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 really convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN uses a wider variety of plans than most 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 exceptional option for individuals who live in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans provide good value; however, longer memberships use the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to offer 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 offered are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending out 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides 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.

Notably, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are handy and friendly, but the thorough responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a large Frequently asked questions area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the very same difficulties understanding a lot 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good 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 very easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s clearly geared 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. But even new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for customers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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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