AirVPN Vs NordVPN 2022: Which To Choose?

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

While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website begins 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 anyone can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. 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 years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN designed 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 sized than most, with just 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its outstanding performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any 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 reliable and protected method 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

No preference is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can get rid of internet restrictions 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 extremely reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has actually likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change 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 comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before registering. 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 pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They also state they abide by EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater 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 use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security offered.

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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best readily available. It resembles that of some other service providers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But 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 data). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those service providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Sadly, 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 user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for different 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 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. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer launches, but 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 actually 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 safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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 shows all available servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive information about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Outstanding 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 variety of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator 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 country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might choose as lots of nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, efficiently 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. To do so, return to the Servers page and choose the server you desire in a particular nation. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays 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 a lot of apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Logs is a comprehensive 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 tweak 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 attempt 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 skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the large 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 preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you try to find them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the very same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a particular city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still quite tough to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software application also tries a little more to help you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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 because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Certainly, one stated 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 rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD video, gaming, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server locations. This may limit the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, 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 utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal 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 right server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

Thankfully, 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.

However, 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 concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (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, triggered 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 Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets simultaneously, 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 family house or want 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 require more.

Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer memberships provide the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The present 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 worldwide alternatives are likewise 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 voucher code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized 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 uses email assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) 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 but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the email support is high quality, and the representatives are helpful and friendly, but the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, consisting of a big FAQs section that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however newbies will have the very same troubles comprehending 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 setup and use.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great prices. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. However 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 much better results than many of its rival VPN competitors.

When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

It may not ensure the exact same level of privacy and privacy 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 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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