AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN Comparison – Are They Any Good? Website Beginner’s Candid View

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

While anybody can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing 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 anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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 larger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed 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 supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than a lot of, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its outstanding performance throughout its server network, with numerous countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no 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 safe and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are offered; 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. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

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

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available 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, but 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 online forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before registering. 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 absolute priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal info 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this details 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 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 methods will fail versus AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they adhere to EU personal privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security supplied.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community 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 huge plus. This suggests that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s excellent because 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). However even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

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

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows 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 picked last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the 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, 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth information about every one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available in each country at a glance, together with a sign 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 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 basically a favorites list; you might select as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To eliminate the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By choosing a nation, you are not immediately 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 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 most apps display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the information they could ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize 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 skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to determine what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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 use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the same substantial setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still quite challenging to understand in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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 competitors since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server areas. This may limit the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will always lead to much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, just because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Indeed, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Simply 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 badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN offers a broader range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets concurrently, 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 reside in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing varies based on the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships provide the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid 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 alternatives are also 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 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 Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, however the comprehensive responses can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, but novices will have the very same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and usage.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Excellent rates, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of 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 good pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. However even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

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

When it comes down to it, this VPN service is more focused on securing 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 appoints you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great choice for consumers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Review – Cyber Freedom At A Cheap Price?