AirVPN Vs Private Internet Access Comparison 2022 – Don’t Buy Until You Check Out This

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect solution for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. Right 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 anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium formerly 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 business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of variety of servers minimizes the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any 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 reputable and safe and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

No preference is given to any service, application, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till a few of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

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

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily change servers as frequently as you like.

You can monitor 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 new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications 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, but considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust 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 good aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service before 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 outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal info 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however 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 figure out what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

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

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

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security provided.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are saying about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This indicates that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best readily available. It resembles that of some other providers, however still worth mentioning. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). But even if the government asked for user details, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced 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 installable or portable 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 work 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. Simple 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’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “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 protected tunnel. A lot of standard 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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, along with comprehensive information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as many countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove 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 country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

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

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

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

This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should 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 really skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program normally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you try to find them. However, if you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application offers the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

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

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever need. The software also tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app spotting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, 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.

Due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be excellent. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server places. This might restrict the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

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 best server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

Nevertheless, streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Undoubtedly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on regional 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, activated by default, will block 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 really hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a larger range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for people who live in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for most people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. A lot of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions use the very best offer.

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

The current plans offered are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international 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 discount coupon 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 used more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, however the detailed responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however newbies will have the exact same problems understanding a lot 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good costs, especially 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 extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, 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 might 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 many of its rival VPN competitors.

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

It might not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for customers 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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