AirVPN Vs PureVPN: Tremendous VPNs Reviewed

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Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best option for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be special these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, but 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 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 discussed and information the personal 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 offering a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than most, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

A lot of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of variety of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are offered; 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 unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol completely in place up until a few of its technical and privacy problems are addressed.

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

Switching is unlimited, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

You can keep track of the present load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues 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 details like the offered 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, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed 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 don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade personal 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, however you can request this details 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 determine what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without stressing over 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 since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they follow EU privacy regulations which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and information 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 protection provided.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve 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 terrific considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available 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 suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly user interface, so it may be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

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

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN provides 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 system launches, but you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected 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 safe and 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 design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

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

The Servers page displays all offered servers in the network, along with in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. Many 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 country, 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 choose as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, effectively making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By selecting a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a specific country. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “indication out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s also a “refresh” button to get updated details on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays 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 many apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, 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 a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the info they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

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

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

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to find out what specific settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program generally works fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. Nevertheless, if you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will provide 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 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same comprehensive setup options as its desktop sibling and valuable status details.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still quite difficult to comprehend 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 require. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, 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.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive 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 circumstances like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for many people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy trial and error. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

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

File sharing has decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (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 block all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to five gadgets concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who reside in a household house or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN service providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. Many plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be easily converted 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

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

AirVPN Customer Support

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

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

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, including a large FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, however novices will have the 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.

Unlimited 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 installation and use.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great prices, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly tailored 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 supplier. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it might not ensure the very same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for customers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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11 Things You Need To Know About AirVPN