AirVPN Vs PIA Comparison – Are They Any Good? Website Beginner’s Genuine View

  • Time to read: 16 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products/services. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

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

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, 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 starts 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 distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

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

During 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 business’s history is described and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 safe and dependable way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many 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. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly reputable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy concerns are addressed.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t 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 issues, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is a detailed specs 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 access points.

All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to 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 comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal information 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this info 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 wi-fi network without stressing over your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also state they comply with EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection 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 before signing up.

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

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

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to alter 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 nations that share intelligence information). But even if the government requested user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, 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 present does not operate on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial 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 chosen last.

Despite the fact that it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 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, in addition to in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each country at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Many 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of nations as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you desire in a specific 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise 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 changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While the majority of 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, existing 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 use a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

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

The truly proficient user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want to utilize 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical 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 country and choose a specific city on the very same page. Some practical text additions make the info more easy to understand, but it’s still rather tough to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of 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 likewise tries a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

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

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This might limit the ease of access of close-by 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 perhaps less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not 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 United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs lengthy trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can 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 system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent option for people who live in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans use good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best deal.

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

The current 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide options are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and using the discount coupon 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 used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, but the thorough responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, but newbies will have the very same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P permitted with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on apps and servers 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 choices in the client app.

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good costs, especially 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 really easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great 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 service provider. But even new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

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

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

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs PureVPN: Find Out Which One We Prefer