AirVPN Vs Seed4.Me: The Top Dog Might Surprise You

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

While anybody can claim to be distinct these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting 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 distinct these days, when it concerns VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously 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 company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

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

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to offer a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely 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 method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are available; 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 hazardous protocols.

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any application, service, or protocol. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite staying up to date with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the newer protocol fully in place up until some of its technical and privacy problems are attended to.

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 don’t like one server, you can quickly switch servers as often as you like.

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

There is an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, but considering that there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before registering. 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?

When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with defense 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 doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this info 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 tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they stick to EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to conceal your IP so that no one can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-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 forum allow 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 indicates that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. It’s similar to that of some other suppliers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The primary data channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your real email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

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

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up 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 does not have the most user-friendly user interface, so it might be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s 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 area. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more because AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN enables you to connect when your computer system launches, but you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Even though it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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. A lot of basic 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 six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

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

The Servers page shows all available servers in the network, along with detailed information about every one, such as the server’s label, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

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

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

By picking a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a specific nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “indication out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket). There are likewise 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 displays a simple 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 most apps display your current 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, information downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the different locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This enables you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize 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 support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program usually operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. However, if you periodically crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

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 utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and useful status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the same page. Some valuable text additions make the information more reasonable, but it’s still rather challenging to understand in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN typically connects rapidly 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 shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

Because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly excellent overall.

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and circumstances like HD streaming, video, and video gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

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

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server needs prolonged experimentation. This is probably since, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Thankfully, 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.

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

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

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 enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 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, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and without any problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets concurrently, 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 reside in a family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should be enough for most people, other VPN providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the very best deal.

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 transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international alternatives 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 utilizing 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 used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and helpful, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a big FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover various topics, however beginners will have the same troubles understanding a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled 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 setup and usage.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Good rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t very user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

Although it may not ensure the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for consumers who value their personal 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 excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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AirVPN Vs FastVPN: The Top Dog Might Shock You