AirVPN Vs SurfShark: 7 Tests To Determine “Who’s Top” In 2022?

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

While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly ran it, however 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 years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the 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 created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

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 variety of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with many countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally 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 reliable and protected method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other risky protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and personal privacy issues are dealt with.

AirVPN has actually also included 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 change servers as often as you like.

You can keep track of the present 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 an in-depth specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available 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 have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking 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 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?

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual information 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 information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this information to be erased at any time. This makes it one of 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 using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they abide by EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater 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 nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security provided.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best available. It’s similar to that of some other companies, but still worth discussing. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can reduce this value. The primary data channel uses 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 great since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t have the ability to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to 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, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite 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.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use 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 numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t operate on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anyone, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 crucial AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t pick which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout 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 protected 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 layout 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 shows all readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth details about each one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your place, and present users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers offered in each nation at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator 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 nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you might pick as numerous countries as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not right away 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 many apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

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. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be difficult to determine what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

Nevertheless, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. If you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t 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 instead. This software offers the same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Different pages for country 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 particular city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the information more understandable, however it’s still rather difficult to comprehend 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 most people will ever require. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Using 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 great, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which 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 competitors since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really excellent overall.

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

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive number of server places. This may restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 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. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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.

Streaming is certainly 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 Permit Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s absolutely nothing to set up, no hoops to leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Several 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, permits port forwarding for as much as 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 integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving 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 hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN provides a broader variety of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 excellent choice for people who live in a family house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans offer good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use 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 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, 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 utilizing the discount 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 Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it uses e-mail support 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 email support isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, however the extensive answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, consisting of a large FAQs section that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however beginners will have the same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and use.

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

Strong Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. But even 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 much better results than a lot of its rival VPN rivals.

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

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

Highly recommended!

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