AirVPN Vs TorGuard: Find Out About The Major Differences

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the best solution for you if yes.

While anyone can claim to be distinct these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to securing user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site 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 anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the help of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently 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 business either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is described and details the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has 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 non-traditional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than most, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.

Many servers are in Europe (besides those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the absence of diversity of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely 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 reputable and secure method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly trusted. The lack of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place up until a few of its technical and privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details 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, but because there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being offered will work. But looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You don’t 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 privacy and security are the outright top priority, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual info logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can ask for this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one 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 worrying about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your data.

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

They also state they adhere to EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very 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 no one can utilize it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security provided.

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 enable you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests 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 examined by a 3rd party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best available. It resembles that of some other service providers, but still worth pointing out. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The main information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal information, not even your real email address. That’s great considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to change 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 countries that share intelligence data). However even if the government requested user details, 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, 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 suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is easy, and it has all the info you require to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to direct you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for different running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in 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 present doesn’t function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits 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.

Even though it defines “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has 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 tunnel. Most standard 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 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply 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 in-depth information about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available in each country at a glance, together with a sign 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 sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may select as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be gotten rid of, 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 desire in a particular 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 likewise a “refresh” button to get updated info on ping times and load times.

The Speed tab shows 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 existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use 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.

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

A million and one other settings are hidden in the app’s Settings menu. This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should always connect when opened, which protocol to use 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 genuinely competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to utilize 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 an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the very same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and handy status info.

Separate 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 choose a particular city on the exact same page. Some useful text additions make the information more reasonable, however it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than many people will ever require. The software also attempts a bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing 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 good, with the app discovering when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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 competition because AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

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

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

What AirVPN does not have is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This might limit the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but perhaps less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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.

Some report that Air is pretty bad 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 says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

Luckily, 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.

Nevertheless, streaming is definitely not an area in which AirVPN excels, merely because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

Yes, it does; every internet protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Undoubtedly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, 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. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (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 obstruct all traffic from leaving 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 extremely convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN uses a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 devices concurrently, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who live in a family home or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should suffice for many people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. A lot of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships use the best deal.

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

The current 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 global alternatives 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 discount coupon code they send you.

There’s also 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance 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 inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and valuable, however the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

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

AirVPN’s community forums cover various subjects, however novices will have the very same problems comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unlimited P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent prices, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So 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 new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. But even new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

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

While it doesn’t 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 outstanding choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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