AirVPN Vs PIA Comparison: Who Is The Champion In 2022?

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

While anyone can declare to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. 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 presently 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 bigger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer an accurate assessment of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely 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 reputable and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Various 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 unsafe protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with 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 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 brand-new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications 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 access points.

All of it is nice, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other people state about the service prior to signing up. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The company is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one 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 wi-fi network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also say they adhere to EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection provided.

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 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 check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. It’s similar to that of some other suppliers, but still worth mentioning. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The primary data channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s fantastic given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of 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 main open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those companies who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled 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 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 introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Many standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six 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 readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise shown. Numerous 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 found 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 may pick as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, 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 particular nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “indication 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 details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows a simple 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 a lot 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 a lot more.

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

Finally, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it must constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely competent 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 vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Remember that the program normally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you search for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the very same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and helpful status info.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a particular city on the exact same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still rather tough to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise attempts a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually 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, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

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

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server locations. This might limit the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however possibly 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs prolonged experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply 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 poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has decent speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a broader variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional choice for individuals who reside in a household house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for many people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates varies based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the exact same features. The majority of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the best deal.

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

The present plans readily 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 global options are likewise 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 utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s also 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and helpful, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, but novices will have the very same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good prices. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But even brand-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 number of its rival VPN rivals.

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

It might not ensure the very same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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