AirVPN Vs TunnelBear Comparison: Give Us 3 Mins, We’ll Give You The Details

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Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the ideal option for you.

While anyone can declare to be distinct nowadays, when it concerns VPN service providers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out 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, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anybody can claim to be unique nowadays, when it comes to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it truly is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of two lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications service provider Iridium formerly 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the non-traditional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the lack of variety of servers lowers the number of global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to provide a precise assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any 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 trustworthy and protected method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Numerous 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 boils down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can get rid of internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately improves users’ privacy and security and is highly trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, however it won’t put the newer protocol completely in place till some of its technical and personal privacy concerns are attended to.

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

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

You can keep track of the current load on each server, any existing issues, and a history of previous problems 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 available ports, protocols, DNS server information (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being provided will work. However looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good feature of this is that you can see what other people say 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 personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal information logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can ask for this info to be erased at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can 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 fretting about your computer system 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 just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they comply with EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or greater levels of personal privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection offered.

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

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

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best readily available. The 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 info, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). Even if the government asked for user 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, offered on all major platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for different 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 does not function on your setup.

After launching it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Simple enough for anybody, but 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

Two key AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits 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 chosen last.

Even though it specifies “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 and secure tunnel. Many basic kill switches just 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 displays 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 available servers in the network, in addition to detailed details about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers available in each nation at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. 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 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 pick as numerous countries 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 country, click the empty box.

By choosing a country, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, return to the Servers page and choose the server you desire in a specific 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 also a checkmark, “X,” and blank box icons. There’s likewise a “refresh” button to get updated information on ping times and load times.

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

While most apps show your current VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals 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, data downloaded and uploaded, and much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the details they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This allows you to tweak 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 genuinely knowledgeable user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the huge feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be hard to figure out what particular settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you try to find them. However, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will offer 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 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 use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software offers the same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Different pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the same page. Some practical text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still rather challenging to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than many people will ever require. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop alert, 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.

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

Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. One said there wasn’t a single country where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was really outstanding 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 scenarios like HD video, streaming, and video gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a broader variety of server places. This might restrict the accessibility of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the big 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to deal with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix hardly ever work, and when they do, finding the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably because, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow P2P?

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

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance 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 Web.

File sharing has decent speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for as much as 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really practical, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with quick download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an outstanding choice for people who live in a household house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN companies offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. Most plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions use the very best deal.

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

The existing 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 choices 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 used more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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 a very active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t contracted out however can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get an action. That stated, the e-mail support is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, however the comprehensive answers can be pretty technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a lot of information, consisting of a large FAQs area that is broken up by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however novices will have the same difficulties understanding a great deal of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent speeds with minimal loss.

Unrestricted 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 setup and use.

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

Solid Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Great rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. 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 a number of its rival VPN competitors.

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

Although it may not ensure the same level of personal 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 customers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

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