Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the perfect service for you if yes.
While anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication 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 anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.
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 supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 bigger business either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed 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 providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.
That said, 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 provide a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no 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 dependable and safe and secure method 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
No choice is given to any service, protocol, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are attended to.
AirVPN has actually also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.
Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep an eye on the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).
There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.
All of it is nice, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being offered 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 individuals say about the service before signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.
Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?
The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual 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 only gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for 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 system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping techniques will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They likewise state they abide by EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of personal privacy and information 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 discover 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 obstructs OpenVPN.
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 registering.
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 just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a 3rd party.
Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best offered. It resembles that of some other suppliers, but still worth discussing. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent given that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you won’t have the ability to change your account’s password if you do not use one.
Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). But even if the government requested for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.
Who Or What Is Eddie??
The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who utilize it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.
Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.
With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t function on your setup.
After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 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 select 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 exact same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. Most standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.
Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.
The Overview just 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, along with detailed information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Outstanding 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 number of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Many servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.
A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be 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 may choose as many countries as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.
By selecting a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose the server you want 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 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 altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.
While many apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing 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 utilize a VPN with all the information they could ever want about the different locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.
Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.
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 experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.
If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.
Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. If you occasionally long for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you don’t want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send out all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.
How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?
Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the exact same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and useful status information.
Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and choose a particular city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more easy to understand, however it’s still rather difficult 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 the majority of people will ever need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app spotting 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 due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.
Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly outstanding overall.
While it wasn’t rather on 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 absolutely will not slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server places. This might limit the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps 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 utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.
Indeed, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.
Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.
Thankfully, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can examine to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.
Streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, merely since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit P2P?
Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’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 leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.
AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Prices
AirVPN provides a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices at the same time, 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 individuals who live in a household home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer memberships offer the best deal.
The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and spent for in the currency of your choice.
The current 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 free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing 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 throughout 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 email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and helpful, however the extensive responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, consisting of a large FAQs section that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however beginners will have the very same troubles comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Exceptional speeds with very little loss.
Unlimited P2P enabled 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 installation and usage.
Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.
Strong Client Service.
Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.
Good prices, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.
Cons:
Only fully supports OpenVPN.
Client app isn’t really user-friendly or pretty like other services.
Client app might overwhelm newer users.
It is very hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
Server numbers are relatively low.
Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?
So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.
While it could be challenging to utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN competitors.
When it boils down to it, this VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
It might not ensure the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good choice for customers who value their 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 excellent option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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AirVPN 101 – A New User’s Guide To Selecting The Right VPN Provider
