Do you want to remain anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the best solution for you if yes.
While anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.
AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anybody can claim to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.
They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium previously ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 organization either.
Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?
AirVPN’s Key Features
Servers
AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with just 246 servers spread throughout 23 nations.
A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the lack of diversity of servers lowers the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their privacy.
That said, Air is popular for its impressive performance across its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.
They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide an accurate assessment of performance, without any 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 use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and trustworthy way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.
Numerous ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other unsafe protocols.
When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic restrictions, and traffic shaping.
The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reliable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy problems are dealt with.
AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.
Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can easily switch servers as often as you like.
You can keep track of the present load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).
There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily 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 considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. However looking 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 state about the service before 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade 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 collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however 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 determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.
There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.
Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.
They also state they adhere to EU personal privacy guidelines and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.
You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection 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 enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service prior to signing up.
All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody 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 3rd party.
Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the very best readily available. It’s similar to that of some other suppliers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The primary data channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.
When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s fantastic because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to change 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 information). But even if the federal 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, available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, regardless of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who use it as standard.
Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.
Regrettably, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.
With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for different 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 discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t work on your setup.
After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.
2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, but 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 defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. The majority of standard kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 just displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.
The Servers page shows all readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth information about every one, such as the server’s label, location, latency in milliseconds from your area, and current 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 shows the variety of servers available 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 likewise shown. Many 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 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 pick as many nations as you like.
If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To get rid of the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.
By choosing a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).
The Speed tab 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 a lot of apps show your existing 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, data uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.
Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.
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 permits 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 via more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.
The genuinely skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.
If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in terms of personalization.
However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program normally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you search for them. However, if you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will provide it.
Suppose you do not wish 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 use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application offers the same comprehensive setup choices 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 nation and select a specific city on the very same page. Some helpful text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.
Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever require. The software likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice does.
Speeds/Performance
Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.
Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.
In terms of 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.
Due to the fact that AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competitors.
Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Indeed, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive overall.
While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and scenarios like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.
What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server locations. This may limit the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however perhaps less so for other 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.
The good news is, 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.
Streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.
Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?
Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.
Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.
File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.
Reviewers have shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.
AirVPN Plans & Rates
AirVPN provides a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five gadgets at the same time, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other devices all at the same time.
This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who live in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for many people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.
Prices differs based on the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer memberships offer the best offer.
The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.
The current 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 out a message to the support team and using the discount coupon code they send you.
There’s also 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 throughout that time.
AirVPN Customer Assistance
AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.
Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and valuable, however the thorough responses can be pretty technical, which may put off those brand-new to VPNs.
AirVPN’s website has a great deal of details, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by topic.
AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but beginners will have the same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.
AirVPN Pros & Cons
Pros:
No logging Whatsoever.
Outstanding speeds with very little 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.
Solid Customer Service.
Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.
Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.
Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and hazardous 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 really hit and miss with streaming services.
No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.
Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.
Located in 14-Eyes Country.
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 good prices. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But 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 get much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its rival VPN rivals.
This VPN service is more focused on securing your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.
It might not guarantee the same level of personal 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 option for customers who value their privacy.
While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional option for online filesharing.
Highly recommended!
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Verdict: Is AirVPN The Perfect Choice For You?
