AirVPN Vs Private Internet Access: The Prizewinner May Shock You

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

While anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing 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 these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger company either.

Throughout 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 supplying 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 than the majority of, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of variety of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate assessment 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 trustworthy and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

You can monitor the existing load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (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 given that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

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

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

When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no individual details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one 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 methods will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they comply with EU personal privacy guidelines 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 nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security provided.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest offered. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful 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 nations that share intelligence data). However even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as excellent as those service providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t 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. Simple enough for anybody, but 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

2 essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables 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 picked last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, along with in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, 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 pick as lots of countries as you like.

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

By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. 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).

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 the majority of apps display your current 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 downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

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

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This allows you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel by means of more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its complexity. Remember that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. If you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want to use 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 an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the very same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status details.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and select a particular city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the info more reasonable, but 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 a lot more than most people will ever require. The software application also tries a bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of personal privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows 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 since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

However, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server areas. This might limit the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for most people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.

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.

Some report that Air is quite poor 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 US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Nevertheless, 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 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 use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

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

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for people who live in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the same features. Most plans offer good value; however, longer memberships offer the best deal.

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

The existing plans 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international options are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending 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 haven’t broken the terms of service or used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really 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 inconsistent with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are practical and friendly, however the detailed responses can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a big FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however novices will have the very same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on servers and apps alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, 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.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

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

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

Although it may not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great choice for consumers who value their personal privacy.

While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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