AirVPN Vs PureVPN Comparison: What You Should Know

  • Time to read: 16 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products/services. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

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

While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it comes to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its commitment to protecting user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website 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 anybody can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

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

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

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has developed 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers reduces the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

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

Numerous ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. In addition, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol totally in place until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are addressed.

AirVPN has likewise included a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

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

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

There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the offered 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 because there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before signing up. You don’t need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The company is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal 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 just gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine 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 strategies will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise say they comply with EU privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the 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 use it to discover 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 nation obstructs OpenVPN.

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

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

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest available. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish 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 e-mail address. That’s great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However know that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence data). Even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to offer them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regrettably, in spite of Eddie’s considerable capability 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 simple, and it has all the details you need to connect to a VPN.

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

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

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re completed, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer launches, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. A lot of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, along with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Impressive 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 available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise 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 found 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, successfully making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By selecting a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you desire in a specific 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

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 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, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever desire about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it must constantly connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom-made DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The truly skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

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

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program typically functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you look for them. If you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want to utilize 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 incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the exact same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and helpful status details.

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

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

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, 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 exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly impressive overall.

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and situations like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server areas. This may limit the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not use 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 check to see if the situation with these streaming websites ever changes.

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 local servers, allows port forwarding for up to 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 built-in 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 out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN provides a broader range of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for people who live in a family home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the same features. Most plans provide good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be quickly transformed to and spent 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide 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 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 during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are valuable and friendly, but the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners 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 very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on apps and servers 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 usage.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great prices, particularly 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 really easy to use or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are a lot of advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-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 utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its rival VPN competitors.

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

It may not guarantee 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 an excellent alternative for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs Avira VPN: Which Is Better?