AirVPN Vs PIA: The Prizewinner Might Shock You

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

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over 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 discussed and information the 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 supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread across 23 nations.

Most servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any speed constraints 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 secure and reputable method 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. Furthermore, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any application, protocol, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trustworthy. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are addressed.

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

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

You can keep track of the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues 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 readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but since there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. However looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service before signing up. 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 concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is extremely clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute priority, with security 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 data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can ask for this information 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 figure out what sort 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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

They likewise say they adhere to EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very 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 remain safe with the high-level security offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow 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 huge plus. This suggests that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other companies, however still worth pointing out. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The primary information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s great given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide 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, despite Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up 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 direct you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. 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

2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually 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 safe tunnel. Many standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but 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 just displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, in addition to in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers readily available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you might select as many countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, effectively 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 pick the server you desire in a particular 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 details 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 display 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, current 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 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 particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

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

The truly knowledgeable user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to use Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send 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 rather. This software provides the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and handy status details.

Separate pages for country 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 very same page. Some practical text additions make the information more understandable, but it’s still quite 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 a lot more than most people will ever need. The software also tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In regards to 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 only supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server locations. This might restrict the ease of access of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 used 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. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is probably because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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 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 option and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance 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 Web.

File sharing has good 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 device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets 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 individuals who reside in a family house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. Most plans offer good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best offer.

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

The existing 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 international alternatives are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

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

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions area that is separated by subject.

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P 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 usage.

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

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many 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, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s clearly geared 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 provider. Even new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for customers who value their 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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