AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN: Terrific VPNs Reviewed

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Do you wish to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal solution for you.

While anybody can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site 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 special these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

Throughout the last years, 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 company’s history is discussed and information 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 offering 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 sized than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes 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 popular for its exceptional performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 dependable and safe and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any protocol, service, or application when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reliable. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol fully in place until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are attended to.

AirVPN has likewise included 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 quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but given that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this information 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without worrying about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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

They likewise state they stick to EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

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

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

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best available. It resembles that of some other companies, however still worth discussing. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The primary data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent considering that 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 do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). But even if the government requested user details, 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 significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, in spite of Eddie’s substantial capability 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

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

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a load 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 explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not work on your setup.

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

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. Many 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all offered servers in the network, along with in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers offered in each nation at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Numerous 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may select as numerous nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, 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 the majority of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the info 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 information.

This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it must always 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 skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface through the Logs pane.

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

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to use Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the same comprehensive setup 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. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more easy to understand, 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 a lot more than most people will ever require. The software likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

Using 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 identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors due to the fact that AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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 truly excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server locations. This may restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other areas.

Streaming

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

Some report that Air is pretty 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the best server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not provide 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 websites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option 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 system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at the same time (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 exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices 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 excellent choice for individuals who reside in a household home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for many people, other VPN providers 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 subscriptions provide the very best offer.

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

The current 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a reaction. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are useful and friendly, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however novices will have the exact same difficulties comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. 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 could do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not ensure the 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 a great alternative for consumers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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