Some VPN companies sell by features, others by price, but AirVPN runs its website asking for your trust, claiming to be "operated by net neutrality, privacy, and anti-censorship activists and hacktivists."
Everyone can say that they are different, but AirVPN proves it too. An About Us section explains the company's background, while the Mission page lists the privacy projects AirVPN has developed or funded (IPLeak.net, an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, etc. ) and highlights other projects it has funded in the past. . (Tor, Electronic Frontier Foundation, WikiLeaks).
AirVPN's network is smaller than most, with just 246 servers spread across 23 countries. Most are in Europe (157) and North America (72), with just 16 in Asia and Oceania infrastructure limited to a single server in New Zealand.
However, AirVPN deserves a thumbs up for its network status page, where you can see all of your servers, their current load, current issues, and a history of recent issues.
An expert-friendly specs page covers a number of interesting low-level technical details that are often very hard to find: encryption types and standards, available ports and protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own), addresses IP entered from each VPN server, and more.
AirVPN's Eddie app (open source, for greater transparency) gives you easy access to the service on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. There are guides to setting up the service on iOS, routers, and more, and AirVPN supports connecting up to five devices simultaneously.
While Eddie offers tremendous control over OpenVPN settings (more on that later), it still doesn't support WireGuard, which inevitably hits performance a bit (we've got more on that below, too).
However, it should be noted that the company does much more with OpenVPN than the average provider. If you're visiting a country where VPNs are blocked, for example, AirVPN supports using OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor to help you connect.
Pricing is also more flexible than most, with plans covering 3 days (€2,20), one month (€7,69), 3 months (€5,49 per month), six months (€5,31 ) and one, two or three years (€4,08, €3,61, €3,02) . monthly), with payment accepted by cards, PayPal, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and more.
Privacy
AirVPN is upfront about its zero-logging policy, making it clear that it does not monitor or track any of your online activities. The company also declares that it complies with the privacy directives of the European Union and that all servers located outside the EU will treat your data with the same or higher levels of confidentiality and data protection.
Everything seems fine to us and, in general, we see no reason to worry. But we'd still like to see AirVPN follow TunnelBear, VyprVPN, ExpressVPN and others by allowing a public audit of their service to see what it's doing.
However, the company is reassuringly transparent in many other areas, from its open source clients to a well-attended community forum where you can see what existing users are talking about before signing up.
We also have no complaints about the technology. AirVPN Users AES-256-GCM encryption, 4096-bit RSA keys, HMAC SHA384 on control channel, with OpenVPN protocol supplemented by OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor to help you connect in VPN-blocked countries.
windows app
AirVPN's open source app Eddie has a lot more Windows download options than we've seen elsewhere. Versions exist for specific operating system versions (from Windows XP to Windows 10), in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and in installable or portable forms. There is a changelog to explain what's new and an archive of previous versions in case the latest version doesn't work for you.
The app can be used like any other VPN, at least in its most basic form. Launch it, then click "Connect to a recommended server", the app connects to your nearest location, and click Disconnect when done. Easy enough, but he tries to go deeper and Eddie quickly reveals the power of him.
Most apps display your locations as a simple list of countries, for example. Eddie shows you the names of the countries, but also the number of servers in that country, the available bandwidth, and the number of connected users.
It's great. So double-clicking on something would connect us to a server in that country, right? Evil. It seems like a sensible shortcut to us, but with Eddie it doesn't matter at all.
In order to connect to any other location than the one chosen by Eddie, we had to navigate through a long list of individual servers. It's not as convenient, though Eddie does jot down the details, showing server location, latency, load, connected users, and more.
With most applications, you can work around this problem by adding servers to a favorites list. The AirVPN alternative allows you to add servers to a block list (where they will never show up) or an allow list (the only servers you'll ever want to use). It's more configurable, but also more complicated, and requires some thought to figure out how to set it up.
It's a similar story when you're online. Most apps show at most the location and IP address of your current VPN server. Eddie's stats page also shows server location, load, current number of users, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and duration, outgoing IPv6 address, uploaded and downloaded data, and much more.
All of this may seem a bit daunting, especially for VPN newbies. But you won't see this information unless you do a search (it's hidden on the stats page), and experts may find it useful.
Settings
If you thought Eddie's main UI was complex, wait until you see the setup, where AirVPN offers more granular end-to-end control over operations than any other VPN app we've seen. From far.
Take the Protocols panel, for example. Eddie only supports OpenVPN, so the most we typically see is a UDP/TCP option and perhaps a "Port" box. Eddie has a list of no fewer than 60 options for various combinations of protocols and ports, including UDP, TCP, and (rarely) SSL or SSH to bypass VPN blocks, along with text descriptions of when to use each ("if your FAI imposes limits or blocks').
Then there is the kill switch (a system to block internet access if the VPN goes down). Most apps have at most one checkbox to turn it on and off. AirVPN gives you options to block or allow incoming or outgoing traffic separately; there are settings to allow local network traffic, pings, or DNS queries; you can add custom IP addresses that will not be affected by the block; and you can even choose how the kill switch will work (using the Windows Filtering Platform or Windows Firewall).
Elsewhere there are options to configure proxy and Tor support, Windows routes, custom DNS servers, network layers you want to pass through the VPN tunnel (you can also block IPv6 traffic or send it out of the tunnel, for example ), add additional OpenVPN directives, even run specific commands on particular program events (starting an app when connected, perhaps, or closing it when a session ends).
There are, however, some omissions. Eddie is great at configuring how a connection works, but it doesn't give you as much control over how a connection is established. There is no "automatic connection when I join an untrusted network", for example.
If the long list of features sounds overwhelming, that's because it is: even if you're a VPN expert, it can be hard to figure out what particular options do and how to get the results you need.
However, don't rule out AirVPN just because of this complexity. Note that the app typically works fine on its own, and you'll never see the settings unless you're intentionally looking. But if you crave power or configurability, even very occasionally, the app is worth a look.
Apps for Android and Mac
AirVPN's Android and Mac apps are pretty much the same as the Windows edition: you can connect with just a few clicks, but there's also a lot more status information and configuration capabilities that you won't see anywhere else.
When we connected to a VPN server with the Android app, for example, it showed 25 separate details about our connection: server name, IP address, and port; local IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and gateways; encryption, hash function, tunnel name and much more. We find this overkill – most people won't need to know 75%, and even if AirVPN thinks the data is necessary, there's no reason it can't be hidden in a Status tab.
The Android app works a bit better in other areas. Unlike Windows, for example, it doesn't have separate pages for country and server lists; you can expand a country to choose a particular city on the same page.
There are not as many settings on Android as on Windows. That's not a major criticism, though: there's still more to it than most people will need. The app also tries a bit more to help you, with more text captions to try to explain what a given option does. But AirVPN still requires a lot of knowledge, and you probably have no idea what most of these setups do. (What are the consequences of setting compression to "Enable", "Disable", or "Downlink Only", for example?)
The Mac app is more like the Windows version and has pretty much the same pros and cons. There are a lot...