AirVPN Vs PIA: Learn About The Key Differences

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

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

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. Right 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 anybody can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very 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 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).

During 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 company’s history is discussed 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN designed 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 most, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply an accurate assessment 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most dependable and safe method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. In addition, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any service, application, or protocol. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reliable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place till some of its technical and privacy concerns are addressed.

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

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

You can keep an eye on 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 details like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however given that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service before 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this details to be deleted 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 tell what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They also say they adhere to EU personal privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very 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 no one can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection offered.

If your ISP or nation obstructs OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.

Open-source clients and a lively community forum enable you to get a sense of what present users are saying about the service before 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 examined by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best readily available. The first exchange uses 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 info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s terrific since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you won’t be able to alter 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 information). But even if the government requested user information, 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, despite Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download alternatives. 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 discuss what’s brand-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 location. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN offers 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 permits you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t pick 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 exact 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, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

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

The Overview 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 shows all available servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise shown. Many 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 may pick as numerous nations as you like.

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

By picking a country, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows 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 a lot of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

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

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

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should 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 truly knowledgeable user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally crave 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 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 exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application offers the very same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

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

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever need. The software also attempts a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting 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 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 only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances 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 nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant 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 United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the best server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, 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 examine to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on 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 utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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, permits port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, 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 issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five 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 people who live in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates varies based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Many plans offer good value; however, longer memberships provide the best offer.

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

The existing 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 out a message to the support team and using the voucher code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, however the thorough answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, including a large FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however beginners will have the same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with minimal 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 installation and use.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. 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 get much quicker speeds and better results than a number of its rival VPN competitors.

When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more concentrated on safeguarding your personal 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 allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for consumers who value their privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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