AirVPN Vs PureVPN Comparison: What You Must Learn

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

While anybody can claim to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing 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 anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and information the personal 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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 most, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of variety of servers lowers the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is popular for its exceptional performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 secure and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses 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. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are attended to.

AirVPN has also 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 quickly change servers as often as you like.

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

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily 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, however considering that there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being provided will work. But looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good aspect of this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual info 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 request this info to be deleted 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about 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 only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they comply with EU privacy policies and that 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 discover who you are. You’ll remain safe with the high-level protection offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the finest offered. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you will not have the ability to change your account’s password if you do not use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those suppliers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you need 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 user-friendly interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a load of download choices. There are builds for numerous operating 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t operate on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You simply click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more considering that AirVPN uses 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 launches, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected 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 distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. Most standard kill switches only 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 simply 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 detailed information about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Excellent 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 number of servers offered in each nation at a look, 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 found 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 essentially a favorites list; you might select as many countries as you like.

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

By picking 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 basic 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 many apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information downloaded and uploaded, and far 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 priceless resource.

Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other data.

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 by means of more versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the vast feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard 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 customization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to utilize 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?

Although 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 comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status info.

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

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software also attempts a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal privacy, leak tests showed 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 because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video, gaming, and streaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive number of server places. This might restrict the availability of nearby 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, but perhaps less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., 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 United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server needs prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow 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 utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a broader variety of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who live in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer memberships use the very best offer.

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

The existing 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 worldwide alternatives are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and using the 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 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 email support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, however the extensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a big FAQs section that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the very same problems comprehending a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great 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 company. Even new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

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

While it does not 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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Is AirVPN The Absolute Best VPN Provider Around?