AirVPN Vs VPNSecure Comparison 2022 – Don’t Buy Until You Read This

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

While anybody can declare to be special these days, when it comes to VPN suppliers, 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, stating, “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 distinct nowadays, when it pertains to VPN service providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications provider Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took over in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is currently 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 bigger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’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 unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN developed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller than the majority of, with only 246 servers spread out across 23 countries.

A lot of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers decreases the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to supply an accurate assessment 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 safe and secure and reputable way to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are readily available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Additionally, every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

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

The use is OpenVPN is a big plus as it automatically enhances users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The absence of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, however it won’t put the more recent protocol fully in place up until a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

AirVPN has likewise added 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 quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

You can monitor the current 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 an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily 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 since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being used will work. But looking at the active community forum or the comprehensive open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice feature of this is that you can see what other individuals state about the service prior to registering. 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?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the business is very clear. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual information 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, but you can request for this information to be erased 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 type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without stressing over your computer 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 also state they abide by EU privacy policies and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection supplied.

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 allow you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before signing up.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This indicates that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been examined by a third party.

Regarding security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the finest offered. The first exchange uses 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 information, not even your genuine email address. That’s fantastic because it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But know that you will not have the ability 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). But even if the government requested for user info, AirVPN would have nothing to give 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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those suppliers who utilize it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is simple, and it has all the details you need 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 does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a heap of download choices. There are builds for numerous operating 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 discuss what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most present does not work on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re completed, you simply click Disconnect. Easy enough for anybody, but Eddie can do so much more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

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

Even though it specifies “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has 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. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but 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 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 displays all available servers in the network, along with comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s label, 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 know whether a server is recommended for you.

The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Similar to the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise revealed. Many 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 nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as lots of countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be eliminated, successfully 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 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 shows an easy 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 details, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, information uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they could ever desire about the numerous 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 allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it should constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor support, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The genuinely skilled user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which allow, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the huge function list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN expert, it might be hard to find out what particular settings do and how to get the preferred results. In addition, it is unlike any other service in terms of customization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you search for them. If you periodically long for power or configurability, the app will offer 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the exact same extensive setup options as its desktop sibling and useful status information.

Different pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks 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 info more reasonable, but it’s still quite difficult to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In terms of 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 competitors since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Nevertheless, reviewers have actually reported speeds to be exceptional. One said there wasn’t a single nation where they could grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was truly remarkable 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 situations like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider number of server locations. This might restrict the accessibility of close-by servers for some users (which will always lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however possibly 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 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.

Some report that Air is pretty poor 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 hardly ever work, and when they do, discovering the best server requires lengthy experimentation. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other service providers, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

Fortunately, 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.

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

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, consisting of peer-to-peer, is welcome. Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, no hoops to jump through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and start.

Plus, you can utilize port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. Numerous 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 good speeds on regional servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and deals with leading 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 will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is extremely hassle-free, especially if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be remarkable, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

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

This makes it an excellent choice for individuals who live in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for the majority of people, other VPN service providers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Prices varies based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans provide good value; however, longer memberships offer the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to provide real-time exchange rates for those overseas, so it can be easily converted to and spent for in the currency of your choice.

The present plans 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, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide options 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 using 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

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

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

AirVPN’s website has a lot of information, including a big Frequently asked questions section that is broken up by topic.

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Excellent 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.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Excellent prices, 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 might 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 choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are relatively low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with good pricing. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN supplier. However even 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 a number of its competing 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.

It may not guarantee the same level of privacy and anonymity as a service like Mullvad, which designates you a random account number and enables you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent alternative for consumers who value their 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 outstanding option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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Private Internet Access Vs AirVPN: Which Service Is Worth Your Attention?