AirVPN Vs TunnelBear: Which One Should You Decide Upon? (2022)

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

While anyone can claim to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN site begins with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN companies, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a small group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications supplier 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 decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger organization either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is described and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has established 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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by offering a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the lack of diversity of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to supply an accurate assessment of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and secure and dependable way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

Numerous 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. So forget PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

No preference is given to any protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is upheld. Importantly, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it immediately enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. The absence of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol completely in place up until some of its technical and privacy concerns are addressed.

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

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

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

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

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

A good aspect of this is that you can see what other individuals 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no individual 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 collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, however you can request for this info 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 type of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless 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 methods will fail versus AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they adhere to EU personal privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the same or higher 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 use it to learn who you are. You’ll remain safe with the top-level security provided.

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

Open-source clients and a lively community online forum enable you to get a sense of what current users are saying about the service prior to signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This suggests that anyone can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a third party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is probably the best available. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to attain 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 real email address. That’s great since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t utilize one.

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

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, readily available on all significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s substantial capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as great as those companies who use it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.

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

With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. There are builds for different operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in portable or installable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss 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 location. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Easy enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout 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 protected tunnel. Most standard kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, however you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page shows all offered servers in the network, in addition to in-depth information about each one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the number of servers readily available in each nation at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

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

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

By picking a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. 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).

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 display your present 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 uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

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

Lastly, 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 permits 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. Or whether to try an SSH tunnel by means of more flexible ports such as 22, 80, and 443. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the vast feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to find out what particular settings do and how to get the desired outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just since of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings up until you look for them. Nevertheless, if you occasionally crave power or configurability, the app will provide it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want 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 offers the exact same comprehensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and valuable status information.

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

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still much more than most people will ever need. The software likewise attempts a little more to help you, with additional text subtitles to discuss what each choice does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In terms of personal privacy, leak tests revealed 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.

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

Reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. Certainly, one stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive 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 scenarios like HD gaming, video, and streaming conferencing absolutely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server locations. This may restrict the availability of close-by servers for some users (which will always result in much better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but possibly less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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.

Indeed, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the significant streaming services. 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the ideal server requires prolonged trial and error. This is most likely since, unlike other suppliers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

The good news is, 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 absolutely not an area in which AirVPN stands out, simply because that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal 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 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 poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, enables port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (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, triggered by default, will block all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is very practical, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN offers a larger variety of plans than most VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 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 family home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should be enough for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices differs based upon the membership length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. The majority of plans offer good value; however, longer subscriptions offer the best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they use the European Central Bank to offer real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The existing plans readily 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

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

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer support offering than many other VPNs. While it doesn’t have live chat, it provides email support and frequently asked questions (FAQs) and has a really active assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Significantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the representatives are practical and friendly, however the comprehensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a lot of info, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

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

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

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

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and use.

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

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Great costs, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is very hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trusted, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be 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 utilize if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than much of its rival VPN rivals.

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

It might not ensure the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates 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 does not 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 choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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