AirVPN Vs NordVPN Comparison – 5 Pros & Cons You Should Learn In 2022

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

While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding 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 claim to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took control of 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 organization either.

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

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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 sized than a lot of, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers decreases the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and trusted method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses 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. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it boils down to it, no preference is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place until some of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.

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

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information 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, however given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people 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 comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal information logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical 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 determine what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

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

They likewise say they adhere to EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and information 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 find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security supplied.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what present users are saying about the service prior to signing up.

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). But even if the government asked 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 major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the details you require 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 user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. There are builds for different running 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 discuss what’s brand-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. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve 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, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. Most standard 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six 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 displays all available servers in the network, along with in-depth information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. Numerous servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

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

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

By picking a nation, 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 a simple 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 show 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 uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

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

Lastly, Logs is a comprehensive record of connections, routes, and other information.

This enables 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. Proxies, Tor support, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the very same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.

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 country and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some valuable text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever require. The software application also tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

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

In terms of personal 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.

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

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server places. This might restrict the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for many people in the United States and Europe, however 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant 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 rarely work, and when they do, finding the right server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

Thankfully, on AirVPN’s site, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

However, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Undoubtedly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can utilize 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 Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, permits 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 unencrypted packets to the Internet. 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 impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

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

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

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

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

The existing 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 choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the coupon 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 assistance offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active assistance 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 e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, but the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, consisting of a large FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but newbies will have the very same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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 options in the client app.

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. However even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for consumers who value their personal 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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