AirVPN Vs TorGuard Comparison: Are These Providers Still Dependable?

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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 anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands out from other VPN services because of its dedication to securing user privacy. 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 special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, however 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 larger organization either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually developed 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 developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority 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 decreases the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no 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 secure and reliable way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

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

No choice is given to any service, application, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely dependable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place until some of its technical and personal privacy issues are addressed.

AirVPN has actually also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to experiment with things.

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

You can keep an eye on 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 a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the available 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 since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to 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 extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the absolute concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack privacy. There is no personal 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 information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request this details 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 sort 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 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 likewise say they comply with EU privacy policies which 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 offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This means that anybody can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but only ProtonVPN’s apps have been inspected by a 3rd party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. The very first exchange utilizes 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 information, not even your real email address. That’s terrific because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to change 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 data). Even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to offer 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, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s significant capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, 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 tough to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download options. There are builds for various operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t function on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Most basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but 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 displays all readily available servers in the network, along with detailed info about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers offered in each country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also revealed. Numerous 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 may select as many countries as you like.

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

By picking a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you want in a specific country. 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). 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 shows 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 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 much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

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

This enables you to tweak 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 truly competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, 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 professional, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply since of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program typically functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. If you sometimes crave 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 all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use a very feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software provides the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

Different pages for nation 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 particular city on the same page. Some handy text additions make the info more understandable, but it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as numerous settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever need. The software application also attempts a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of personal 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.

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

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

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

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server places. This might restrict the ease of access of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for many 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 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.

Some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server needs prolonged experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Just connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 regional servers, allows 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 top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out 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 actually shown torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a wider variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets all at once, 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 people who reside in a family home or want to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for many people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

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

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

The present plans offered are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

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

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

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

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

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

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global alternatives are likewise 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 utilized 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 offers e-mail support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

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

AirVPN’s website has a lot of details, including a big FAQs area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however beginners will have the exact same problems understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P permitted 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 usage.

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

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Online Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and harmful sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, dependable, and safe VPN service with excellent prices. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. 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 better results than a lot of its competing 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 may not guarantee the exact same level of privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for consumers who value their privacy.

While it does not 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 exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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The Honest Truth About AirVPN In Just 5 Minutes