AirVPN Vs NordVPN: First-Class VPNs Reviewed

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

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

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts 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 distinct these days, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications 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).

Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the personal 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 providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its outstanding performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no 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 safe and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are 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. So ignore PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place till some of its technical and privacy issues are addressed.

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

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

You can monitor the existing 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 specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. But 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 say about the service prior to registering. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The company is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what kind 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 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 just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they stick to EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact 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 use it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security provided.

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 signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies 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 actually been inspected by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. It resembles that of some other companies, 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 happens every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s terrific given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not have the ability to change 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 information). Even if the federal government asked for user details, 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, available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

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

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

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

The Overview just 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, together with detailed info 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 glance, 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you might choose as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a particular country. Then, 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays a basic throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While many apps show your current 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, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

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

Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.

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

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

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to determine what particular settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program typically operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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 use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the very same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Separate 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 choose a particular city on the exact same page. Some valuable text additions make the info more easy to understand, but it’s still quite challenging to understand 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 likewise tries a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

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

Now let’s get to those speeds.

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

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. One said 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 use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and situations like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server places. This may restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.

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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your choice 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 as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block 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 really hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices 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 people who reside in a family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for many people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be easily 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 worldwide choices 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 using the voucher code they send you.

There’s also 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 Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are valuable and friendly, however the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a large FAQs area that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however newbies will have the exact same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on servers and apps alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably 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 good 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. However even brand-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 a lot of its rival VPN competitors.

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

It might not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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