AirVPN Vs VeePN – Our Experts Decide

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

While anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to safeguarding user privacy. From the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications supplier 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 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 explained and information the personal privacy projects that AirVPN has actually established or supported. These include an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

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

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from 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 global AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, without any overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, with no speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most trustworthy and protected method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers 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 unsafe protocols.

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any application, protocol, or service. Net Neutrality is maintained. Notably, you can overcome web constraints such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it immediately enhances users’ personal privacy and security and is highly dependable. However, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That said, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

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

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

You can keep 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 specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s access points.

All of it is nice, however since there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being used will work. But taking a look at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other individuals say about the service before signing up. 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 company is very 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 attack privacy. There is no personal details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only collects non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, however you can request this details to be erased 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 figure out what sort of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

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 strategies 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 also state they abide by 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 hide your IP so that no one can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security supplied.

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 forum allow you to get a sense of what present users are stating about the service prior to registering.

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

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best available. The first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain 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 genuine e-mail address. That’s great given that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. However be aware that you will not be able to change your account’s password if you don’t 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 information, AirVPN would have nothing to provide them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, readily available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Despite Eddie’s substantial ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those service providers who utilize it as standard.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit tastes, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to explain what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not operate on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. When you’re ended up, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, however Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we have actually seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Although it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its secure tunnel. The majority of standard 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 layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are 6 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 comprehensive info about each one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your location, and current users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the variety of servers offered in each nation at a look, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is also shown. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a 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 may choose as lots of nations as you like.

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

By picking a country, you are not immediately connected to a VPN server. 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 shows a simple 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 many apps show 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, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and far more.

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

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

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

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

If the large feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Keep in mind that the program generally functions fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you search for them. Nevertheless, if you sometimes yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to use 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?

Although there isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the same comprehensive setup choices as its desktop sibling and practical status details.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Rather, you can expand a country and choose a specific city on the very same page. Some useful text additions make the information more easy to understand, however it’s still rather challenging to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than the majority of people will ever require. The software likewise attempts a little more to assist you, with additional text subtitles to describe what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was great, with the app identifying when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notice, 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.

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

Nevertheless, reviewers have reported speeds to be exceptional. Undoubtedly, 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 use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and scenarios like HD video, video gaming, and streaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a broader number of server places. This may restrict the accessibility of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but possibly 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 actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is quite bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and United States Netflix seldom work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

However, 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 privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit 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 use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Several applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run badly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

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

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

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

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding option for people who reside in a family house or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices differs based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. A lot of plans use good value; however, longer memberships use the best deal.

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

The present 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 worldwide choices are likewise accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the voucher 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 utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

Notably, AirVPN’s email support isn’t outsourced but can be a little inconsistent with the time it takes to get a response. That stated, the email support is high quality, and the agents are practical and friendly, but the detailed answers can be pretty technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different topics, however newbies will have the very same difficulties comprehending a lot of the tech lingo in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little 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 usage.

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

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Online Forums and Detailed Guides.

Good rates, particularly for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from ads, adware, trackers, and harmful 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 extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced options.

Found in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with excellent rates. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not guarantee the very 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 choice for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it doesn’t 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 excellent option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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Why I Strongly Recommend AirVPN Over Other VPN Providers