AirVPN Vs Windscribe: 7 Tests To Determine “Who’s Top” In 2022?

  • 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 stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the best service for you.

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

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its dedication to protecting user privacy. Right 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 anybody can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN reveals that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a very long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the help of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company 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).

Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a larger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is discussed and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has actually 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 offering a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

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

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

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

The majority of servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small problem here is that the absence of variety of servers lowers the number of international AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home nation while preserving their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is well known 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 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 safe and secure and dependable method to create encrypted tunnels. It uses more security than the military.

Numerous ports and protocols are readily 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 about PPTP and other risky protocols.

When it comes down to it, no preference is given to any protocol, application, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Notably, you can overcome web 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 trustworthy. Nevertheless, the absence of WireGuard as standard may show Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN says it is testing WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place until a few of its technical and personal privacy issues are attended to.

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 do not like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

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

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with information 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 given that there is no third-party audit, you have to trust that what is being provided will work. However taking a look at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to 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?

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online personal privacy and security are the outright concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal 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 only collects non-identifiable “technical data” 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 tell what kind of traffic or protocol you’re using.

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

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping strategies will fail versus AirVPN since your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they follow EU personal privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater 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 nobody can use it to discover who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level protection 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 enable you to get a sense of what present 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 look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the very best available. It’s similar to that of some other providers, however still worth mentioning. The very first exchange utilizes 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) via Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying happens every 60 minutes, and the user can lower this value. The primary information channel employs AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. But be aware that you will not have the ability to change 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 nations that share intelligence data). But even if the government requested for user information, AirVPN would have nothing to give them.

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, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s significant ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t rather as good as those companies who utilize it as requirement.

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 hard to get things working, it does not have the most user-friendly interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for unskilled users.

With Windows, there are a load of download alternatives. There are builds for various 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 describe what’s brand-new and an archive of past releases in case the most current doesn’t function on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest place. When you’re finished, you simply click Disconnect. Simple 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 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN allows you to connect when your computer system starts up, but you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you chosen last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in 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 safe and secure tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but 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 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, in addition to in-depth info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and existing users and server load. Outstanding stuff!

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

The Countries page shows the number of servers available in each country at a glance, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise shown. 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 country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is basically a favorites list; you may choose as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that nation will be removed, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By choosing 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 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 the majority of apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained info, 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 much more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the details they might ever desire about the various locations, down to the number of users on a specific server. It’s an invaluable resource.

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

This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it ought to always connect when opened, which protocol to use between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

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

If the huge feature list appears frightening, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be hard to determine what specific settings do and how to get the wanted results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to customization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply due to the fact that of its complexity. Keep in mind that the program normally operates fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings till you look for them. If you occasionally 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an exceptionally feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and practical status information.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and pick a specific city on the exact same page. Some practical text additions make the details more easy to understand, but it’s still quite challenging to comprehend in some spots.

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

Speeds/Performance

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

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was good, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, informing us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of personal privacy, leak tests showed 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 because AirVPN just supports OpenVPN.

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

While it wasn’t quite on top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for the majority of people, and scenarios like HD video, streaming, and gaming conferencing absolutely will not slow you down.

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

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. However, it appears to deal 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, finding the ideal server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other companies, AirVPN doesn’t use servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

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

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 focused 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 option and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of 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 decent speeds on regional servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports at once (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with leading torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will block all traffic from exiting your gadget 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 very practical, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be outstanding, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and without any issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a wider range of plans than a lot of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect up to 5 devices concurrently, 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 individuals who reside in a household house or want to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 should be enough for most people, other VPN providers offer 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Prices varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the same features. The majority of plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships offer the very best offer.

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

The existing 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, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of global 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 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 throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance 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 assistance forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s email assistance isn’t contracted out but can be a little irregular with the time it takes to get a reaction. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the representatives are friendly and handy, however the extensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those brand-new to VPNs.

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

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

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted 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 choices in the client app.

Strong Client Service.

Active Community Forums and Detailed Guides.

Good rates, especially 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 very user-friendly 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.

Maybe there are too many advanced alternatives.

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, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great prices. It’s clearly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. Even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

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

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

It may not ensure the exact same level of personal 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 a good alternative for customers who value their personal 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 exceptional choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

Click Here Or Below To Join AirVPN Today!!

AirVPN Vs CyberGhost In 2022 – Our Conclusion