AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN: Learn Which One We Favor

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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 anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, specifying, “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 nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 company’s history is explained and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed 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 sized than many, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reputable and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous 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 unsafe protocols.

When it boils down to it, no preference is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. Nevertheless, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till some of its technical and privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the 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, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust 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 nice aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before registering. 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?

When it pertains to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal privacy. There is no personal details 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this details to be erased at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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 techniques will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they abide by EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can use it to find out who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level security supplied.

If your ISP or country blocks 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 current users are saying about the service prior to registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best offered. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not 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). But even if the federal government requested for user details, 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, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, despite Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for various 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 doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits 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 actually 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 safe tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but 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 six 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, 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 shows the variety of servers offered in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise 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 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 essentially a favorites list; you might select as many nations as you like.

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

By selecting a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a particular nation. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows an easy 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 a lot of apps display your existing 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 much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits 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 attempt an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few 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 professional, it might be tough to find out what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings till you search for them. However, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and helpful status information.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a particular city on the exact same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more easy to understand, however it’s still quite difficult 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 likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing 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 great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests showed 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.

Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble 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 the majority of people, and scenarios like HD gaming, streaming, and video conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server locations. This might limit the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the 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 works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will block 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 very convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a wider variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for people who reside in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for most people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates varies based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are handy and friendly, but the extensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however newbies will have the same problems comprehending a lot of the tech jargon 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 Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great rates, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and hazardous sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t very user-friendly 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.

Possibly there are too many advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably 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 great rates. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not ensure the very same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent choice for customers who value their privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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