AirVPN Vs Private Internet Access: The Top Dog Might Surprise You

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

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

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over 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 larger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These include 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 providing a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals 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 across 23 nations.

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with numerous nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer an accurate assessment of performance, without any 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most dependable and safe 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 hazardous protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.

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

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

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the 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 because there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this information to be erased 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 fretting 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 since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they stick to EU 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 brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay 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 present 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 examined by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. It resembles that of some other companies, but still worth discussing. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real email address. That’s terrific given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you won’t be able to alter 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 nations that share intelligence data). Even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those suppliers who use 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 guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for different operating 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not operate on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually 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 system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout 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. Many basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

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

The Overview just 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, in addition to detailed details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present 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 available in each nation at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently 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, return to the Servers page and choose the server you desire in a specific country. 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 likewise 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 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 the majority of apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, existing 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 want about the different locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it needs to constantly 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 experienced user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to determine what particular settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings till you try to find them. If you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the very same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a particular city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to enter 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 notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal 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 competitors due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Undoubtedly, one stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server areas. This may restrict the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the significant 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 ideal server requires lengthy experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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.

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice 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’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for up to 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 built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

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

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

Pricing varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions use the best offer.

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

The existing plans offered are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

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

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

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

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

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

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international options are likewise 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 utilizing 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than lots of 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 assistance online 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 an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, but the comprehensive responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

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

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent 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 setup and use.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from ads, 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 more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be 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 utilize if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and better results than much of its rival VPN rivals.

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

Although it might not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and 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 exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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