AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN Comparison – Both As Quick As They Say? Know Now

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the ideal service for you if yes.

While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it comes to VPN service 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 begins 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 declare to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider 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).

Throughout 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.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of variety of servers lowers the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 trustworthy and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Various 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. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy issues are addressed.

AirVPN has actually likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

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

You can keep an eye on the current 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info 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 have to trust that what is being provided will work. But taking a look at the active community 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 signing up. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this info 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 wireless network without stressing over your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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

They likewise say they follow EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher 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 no one can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection offered.

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates 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 actually been examined by a third party.

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

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

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). However even if the government requested for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as great as those suppliers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the info you need 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 does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download choices. 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current does not work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN provides 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 starts up, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout 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 safe tunnel. Many basic kill switches just 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 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Remarkable 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 variety of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Lots of 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 discovered 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 might pick as lots of nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By choosing a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and select the server you want in a specific nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “indication 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows a basic 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 most apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing 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 desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really competent 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 frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to find out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. If you occasionally yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply 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 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 use a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the same extensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status information.

Different pages for country 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 exact same page. Some practical text additions make the information more reasonable, but it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than the majority of people will ever need. The software also tries a little more to assist 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 enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, 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 competitors because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. One said there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding 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 scenarios like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server places. This may limit the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for most people in the United States and Europe, but maybe 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server needs lengthy experimentation. This is probably since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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

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

File sharing has decent 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 integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets concurrently, 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 individuals who reside in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Many plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions provide the very best deal.

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

The present 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 global choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the voucher 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and helpful, but the detailed answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, consisting of a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however novices 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 minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P allowed 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 use.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, 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 supplier. However even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a good alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Reviews: 5 Important Details To Consider In 2022