AirVPN Vs ProtonVPN: The Victorious One Might Shock You

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best service for you.

While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts 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 anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little 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 currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and safe way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other risky protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trusted. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as frequently as you like.

You can monitor the existing 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 a detailed specs 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 access points.

All of it is nice, however given that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service prior to 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 very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this info to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out 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 and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also state they follow EU personal privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to discover 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 nation blocks OpenVPN.

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge 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 been inspected by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic because 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 do not use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, regardless of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct 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 inexperienced users.

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

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more because 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 allows you to connect when your computer 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 specifies “kill switch” throughout 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 protected tunnel. Most 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview merely 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 shows all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive information about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Excellent 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 country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may select as lots of countries as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).

The Speed tab shows a 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 the majority of apps show your present 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, information downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

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

Lastly, Logs is a detailed 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 tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel through more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface via the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally works fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide 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 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 utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application supplies the very same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status details.

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

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever need. The software likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to 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.

Because 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 stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server places. This may restrict the ease of access of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however possibly 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 been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective 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. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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

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

File sharing has decent speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals 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 will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 excellent option for people who reside in a household house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for the majority of people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based on the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best offer.

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

The present plans offered 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 likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

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

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s email support isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are friendly and useful, however the comprehensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, including a large Frequently asked questions area that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however newbies will have the exact 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.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and use.

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

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent prices, especially 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 user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. Even new users could 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 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 might not ensure the same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great alternative for consumers who value their privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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