AirVPN Vs VeePN: Fantastic VPNs Reviewed

  • Time to read: 16 min.
Affiliate Disclaimer

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products/services. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

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

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it genuinely is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website 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 anybody can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company 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).

Throughout the last years, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger business either.

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

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by providing a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its competitors with such strong personal privacy qualifications?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

A lot of servers are in Europe (besides those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor issue here is that the lack of variety of servers minimizes the number of worldwide AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation methods to offer a precise evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are completely unlimited, without any speed restrictions or time limits.

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

Various ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Moreover, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So forget PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

When it comes down to it, no choice is given to any protocol, service, or application. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can get rid of internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely trustworthy. However, the lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the more recent protocol totally in place until some of its technical and personal privacy issues are dealt with.

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

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

You can keep track of the existing 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 detailed specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available 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 have to trust that what is being offered will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service prior to signing up. You do not have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

The company is extremely clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no personal details 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can ask for this info to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can figure out what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without fretting about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

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 stick to EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or higher levels of personal 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 use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection offered.

If your ISP or nation 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 allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to registering.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real e-mail address. That’s excellent since it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be aware that you will not 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). But even if the federal government requested for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, offered on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Sadly, in spite of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more difficult learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a ton of download choices. 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 current does not function on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. You just click Disconnect when you’re finished. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve 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 starts up, however you can’t select which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you picked last.

Despite the fact that it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The distinction is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. Many basic 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 six 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, in addition to in-depth info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Remarkable stuff!

This tab also 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 glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also 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 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 might select as many countries 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 choosing a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. To do so, go back to the Servers page and select the server you want in a specific nation. 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 information 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 the majority of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained info, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to use a VPN with all the info they could ever want about the different locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a priceless resource.

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

This permits you to fine-tune the setup, such as whether it ought to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely experienced user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management User Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the vast function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to find out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of personalization.

Nevertheless, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its complexity. Bear in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings until you look for them. If you sometimes 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 utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the very same substantial configuration options as its desktop sibling and handy status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a nation and pick a particular city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the information 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 many people will ever need. The software also tries a bit more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In regards to personal 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.

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

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually impressive overall.

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

What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server places. This might restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will constantly result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for most people in the United States and Europe, however maybe 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 USA, whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite poor 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 states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix rarely work, and when they do, finding the right server requires lengthy trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not provide servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

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

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on regional 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 top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you won’t be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

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

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan includes the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer subscriptions offer the best deal.

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

The present 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 options 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 discount coupon code they send you.

There’s likewise 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

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

Significantly, AirVPN’s e-mail assistance isn’t contracted out however can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get an action. That said, the email assistance is high quality, and the agents are friendly and useful, but the extensive responses can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of information, including a big FAQs section that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several subjects, but novices will have the very same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding 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 setup and use.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Online Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

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

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

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

Client app may overwhelm more recent users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are fairly low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Option?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. But 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 receive much quicker speeds and better results than a lot of its competing VPN rivals.

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.

It might not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great option for consumers who value their personal privacy.

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

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

Absolute Best VPN Providers You Really Should Consider Using Today