AirVPN Vs TunnelBear: Which Is Best For You?

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

While anyone can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN site starts 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 anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows 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 two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium previously ran it, but AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 company either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is discussed and information 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 offering a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small issue here is that the absence of variety of servers reduces the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely 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 trustworthy and safe method to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are 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 risky protocols.

No choice is given to any application, protocol, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Importantly, you can overcome internet constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. Nevertheless, the lack 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 fully in place till some of its technical and privacy concerns are dealt with.

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

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

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

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the offered 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, however because there is no third-party audit, you have to rely on that what is being offered will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. 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 company 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 invade privacy. There is no individual info 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request 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 kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 techniques will fail against AirVPN since your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or greater levels of privacy and information 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 high-level security offered.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are saying 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 look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have been checked by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the finest readily available. The first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. But understand that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). However even if the federal government requested user info, AirVPN would have nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, offered on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. In spite of Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as excellent as those providers who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.

Sadly, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not hard to get things working, it doesn’t have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download options. There are builds for numerous running 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 describe what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing does not function on your setup.

After introducing it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do a lot more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two essential AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has actually a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. Many standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can set up 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 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 displays all offered servers in the network, together with comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, location, latency in milliseconds from your location, and present users and server load. Outstanding 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 variety of servers readily available in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise 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 found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as many nations as you like.

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

By picking a country, you are not right away 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 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 altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While many apps show your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained information, 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 a lot 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 an invaluable resource.

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

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

The truly skilled user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface via the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to find out what specific settings do and how to get the wanted outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

However, do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never see the settings until you search for them. If you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application provides the same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable 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 nation and pick a particular city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the details more reasonable, but 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 many more than most people will ever need. The software also tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN generally connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of 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 competition since AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD video gaming, streaming, and video conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a more comprehensive variety of server places. This may limit the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice 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 TV, 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 U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t 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 seldom work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Permit P2P?

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

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

File sharing has good speeds on regional servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very hassle-free, especially 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 issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

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

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

Rates varies based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions provide the best offer.

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

The current 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international alternatives are also 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 using the 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout 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 uses e-mail support 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.

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are useful and friendly, however the extensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of info, including a big FAQs area that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, however newbies will have the same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 options in the client app.

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Excellent costs, especially for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are a lot of advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with great prices. It’s plainly 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 supplier. Even new users could 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 much better results than many of its competing VPN competitors.

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

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

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

Highly recommended!

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