AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN: Outstanding VPNs Compared

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best option for you.

While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. 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 declare to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started 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 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 bigger company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than many, with only 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply a precise evaluation 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most secure and trusted method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Many 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 unsafe protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are resolved.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily 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 new tab).

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

A good thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. You don’t have 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 outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal 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 only gathers 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

They likewise state they follow EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher 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 learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security supplied.

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

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

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

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. The 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 information, not even your genuine email address. That’s great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not 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 information). However even if the government requested for user info, 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. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the details you require 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 easy to use interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. 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 current does not work on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t pick 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 basic 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 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 available servers in the network, together with comprehensive information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also 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 choose as lots of countries as you like.

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

By selecting a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and choose the server you want 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 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 display your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

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

The genuinely knowledgeable user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically yearn 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 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 instead. This software supplies the exact same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and valuable 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 nation and pick a particular city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever require. The software application also tries a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

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

While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing certainly will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider number of server places. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for many people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, 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.

Indeed, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the right server needs lengthy trial and error. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Certainly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to set up, no hoops to leap 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. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly 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 works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an exceptional choice for people who reside in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Rates differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best offer.

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

The present plans readily available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

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

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

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

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

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

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international options are likewise 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 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and useful, however the thorough responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of info, consisting of a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however newbies will have the very same troubles understanding a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P permitted with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good prices, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from ads, 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 extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s plainly 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 provider. Even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it may not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for customers 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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