AirVPN Vs Windscribe: The Smart Decision Is

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN could be the ideal solution for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be special nowadays, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it genuinely is.

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

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small 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 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 explained and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

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

How does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong personal 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.

Many servers are in Europe (other than those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A small concern here is that the lack of variety of servers decreases the number of worldwide AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while preserving their privacy.

AirVPN Servers

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

They use transparent bandwidth allocation techniques to provide an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are totally unlimited, without any 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 trusted and safe and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It provides more security than the military.

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

When it boils down to it, no choice is given to any application, protocol, or service. Net Neutrality is upheld. Significantly, you can get rid of web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographic constraints, and traffic shaping.

The use is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is highly reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard may reveal Air isn’t rather keeping up with its rivals. That stated, AirVPN states it is evaluating WireGuard, but it won’t put the newer protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and personal privacy problems are resolved.

AirVPN has also added a lot for power users and tech-savvy individuals who like to try out things.

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

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

There is a comprehensive specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the offered ports, protocols, DNS server info (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 rely on that what is being used will work. Looking at the active community forum or the in-depth open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A good thing about this is that you can see what other individuals state 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 personal privacy and security are the absolute top priority, with defense from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade 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 gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request this information to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, nobody can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re using.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wi-fi network without worrying about 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 stick to EU personal privacy guidelines which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the very same or greater levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a brand-new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can utilize it to find out who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level protection provided.

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 online forum allow you to get a sense of what current users are stating about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This suggests 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 been examined by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best offered. 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 info, not even your real email address. That’s excellent considering that it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. However understand that you will not be able to alter your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). Even if the government asked for user info, 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 significant platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Regardless of Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

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

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

With Windows, there are a ton of download alternatives. There are builds for numerous running 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 new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t operate on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You simply click Disconnect when you’re completed. Simple enough for anyone, but Eddie can do so much more since AirVPN offers more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two key AirVPN functions through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the exact same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe and secure tunnel. The majority of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, however 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 merely shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page shows all readily available servers in the network, together with detailed details about every one, such as the server’s nickname, area, latency in milliseconds from your location, and existing users and server load. Excellent stuff!

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

The Countries page displays the variety of servers available in each country at a glimpse, together with a sign of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green sign is also revealed. 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 discovered 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 might pick as numerous countries as you like.

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

By choosing a nation, you are not instantly 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 altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While most apps display your existing VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also shows fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, present user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and far more.

Power users, in particular, should value the ability to utilize a VPN with all the info they could ever desire about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a particular server. It’s a valuable resource.

Logs is an in-depth record of connections, routes, and other information.

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

The truly competent user can enter into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which permit, to name a few things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface through the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be tough to figure out what specific settings do and how to get the preferred outcomes. In addition, it is unlike any other service in regards to personalization.

Don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie simply because of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program generally functions fine by itself, and you’ll never ever see the settings till you look for them. However, if you sometimes crave power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not want 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?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize a very feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software provides the very same comprehensive configuration choices as its desktop sibling and handy status details.

Different 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 choose a particular city on the very same page. Some handy text additions make the info more easy to understand, but it’s still quite tough 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 need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to describe what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

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

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

In regards to privacy, leak tests showed 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.

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

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be excellent. One stated there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually outstanding overall.

While it wasn’t quite at the top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and situations like HD video, streaming, and gaming conferencing definitely will not slow you down.

What AirVPN does not have is a wider variety of server areas. This may restrict the availability of nearby servers for some users (which will always result in better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an outstanding option for the majority of people in the United States and Europe, but maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge 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 powerful enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the USA, whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is quite poor for streaming and doesn’t work with any of the major streaming services. Nevertheless, 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, discovering the best server needs lengthy experimentation. This is most likely because, unlike other providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

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

Streaming is absolutely not an area in which AirVPN excels, simply since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Permit Torrenting?

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

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

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 deals with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, triggered by default, will obstruct all traffic from exiting your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Internet. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, particularly 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 problems whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Prices

AirVPN uses 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 devices all at the same time.

This makes it an outstanding choice for individuals who reside in a household home or wish to utilize a VPN on a public network. While five should suffice for most people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you require more.

Pricing varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Many plans use good value; however, longer memberships provide the very best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. They utilize 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 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 worldwide choices are likewise 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 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 Support

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

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

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of details, consisting of a large Frequently asked questions section that is separated by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however beginners will have the same difficulties understanding a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed 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 installation and usage.

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

Strong Customer Service.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect 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 newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Maybe there are a lot of advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Nation.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reliable, and safe VPN service with excellent pricing. It’s plainly tailored towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN provider. 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 many of its competing VPN competitors.

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

It may not ensure the 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 an excellent choice for consumers who value their 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 option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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