AirVPN Vs SurfShark: The Prizewinner Might Surprise You

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

While anyone can claim to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN companies, 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 aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 company either.

Throughout 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 providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of diversity of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to supply an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 trusted and protected method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous 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 application, protocol, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are attended to.

AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is unlimited, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly switch servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community online forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great feature of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

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

The business is really clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no individual details 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 data” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this details to be erased 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 determine what sort of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

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

They likewise state they adhere to EU privacy policies 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 new IP address to hide your IP so that no one can use it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection provided.

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

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

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates 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 actually been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the best readily available. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) by means of Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s great given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you will not be able to alter 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). But even if the government asked for 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. In spite of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information you require 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 easy to use interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download alternatives. There are builds for different 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 explain 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. You just click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple 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

2 essential AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Even though it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. A lot of 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 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 offered servers in the network, in addition to comprehensive details about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Remarkable 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 number of servers available in each nation at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be 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 choose as lots of nations as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you desire in a particular nation. Then, connect to a server by marking it and clicking the “sign 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 also a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab displays an easy 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 most apps display your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained information, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the information they could ever want about the various locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it ought to always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

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

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t want 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 an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software offers the very same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status information.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a nation and select a specific city on the very same page. Some practical text additions make the details more understandable, however it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than many people will ever need. The software also tries a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

Using OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects quickly and is ready to go in 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 notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

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

Now let’s get to those speeds.

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

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server areas. This might restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not 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 United States Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

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 works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN provides a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who reside in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five really should be enough for many people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Rates varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; however, longer memberships offer the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time currency exchange rate for those overseas, so it can be quickly converted to and spent for in the currency of your option.

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 worldwide choices are likewise 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 utilizing the coupon code they send you.

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

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than lots of other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has a really active support 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 inconsistent with the time it requires to get an action. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are helpful and friendly, however the thorough answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of details, including a large FAQs section that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the same problems understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P permitted 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 installation and usage.

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

Solid Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Good rates, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great 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 supplier. Even brand-new users might 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 better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.

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

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

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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