AirVPN Vs SurfShark: Learn About The Key Differences

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

While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website 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 declare to be special these days, when it concerns VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

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

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These include 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 supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN compare to its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than many, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 nations.

The majority of servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its impressive performance across its server network, with lots of nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 safe and secure and trustworthy method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides 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. 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 maintained. Notably, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ personal privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That said, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place till some of its technical and personal privacy issues are resolved.

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

Switching is limitless, so if you don’t like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

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

A great aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before signing up. 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?

When it concerns AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is really clear. Online privacy and security are the outright top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual information 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 just collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request for this information to be deleted 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 tell what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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

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

They also say they abide by EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of personal privacy and information 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 protection supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN.

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This means that anybody can check out 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.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best available. It resembles that of some other suppliers, but still worth discussing. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via 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 uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal info, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not utilize one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those service providers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the details you require to connect to a VPN.

Regrettably, 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 unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download options. There are builds for numerous 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 brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t operate on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do a lot more because AirVPN provides 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 permits you to connect when your computer system launches, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Most standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish 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 just 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 readily available servers in the network, together with in-depth details about each 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 understand whether a server is recommended for you.

The Countries page shows the number of servers offered in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may pick as lots of nations as you like.

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

By choosing a country, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and pick the server you want in a particular nation. 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 info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays a simple throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While a lot of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals 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 downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This permits 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 versatile ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the large function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program usually works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send out all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software application supplies the very same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

Separate pages for country 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 particular city on the exact same page. Some valuable text additions make the details more easy to understand, but it’s still quite difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever need. The software application likewise attempts a bit more to help you, with extra text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop alert, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

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

Reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One stated there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding overall.

While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and scenarios like HD streaming, video gaming, and video conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server areas. This might restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

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

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN does not use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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 configure, no hoops to leap through. Merely connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 good speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget 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 convenient, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

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

This makes it an outstanding option for individuals who reside in a household house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing differs based upon the membership length, and each plan includes the same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer memberships use the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your choice.

The present plans available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free 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 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 support offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses email assistance and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out but can be a little inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and useful, but the thorough answers can be quite technical, which may put off those brand-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, but newbies will have the exact same troubles understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional 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 options in the client app.

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good costs, particularly 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 really user-friendly or attractive like other services.

Client app might overwhelm more recent users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

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

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

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

It might not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent choice 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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