Price When Reviewed

$7.50

Best Prices Today: AirVPN

AirVPN briefly:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Unlimited machine connections: No, 5 simultaneous machine connections
• Business location: Italy
• Number of servers: 200+
• Number of nation places: 23
• Cost: $7.50 per thirty days, or $52 for a yr

AirVPN, in the identical vein as different companies corresponding to Mullvad VPN, enjoys a little bit of a cult following amongst VPN customers and privateness advocates. Running virtually completely on the OpenVPN protocol, and fashioned by a collective of “hacktivists,” AirVPN prioritizes safety and privateness above all else. It’s a VPN service that sticks to its ideas and tends to not deviate from exterior of its consolation zone. 

With altering values about what constitutes a very good VPN, I made a decision to take one other spin with this VPN, initially created to fight censorship and defend internet neutrality. I needed to see the way it measures as much as the highest VPNs and to see the place it suits into the broader, trendy shopper market as a complete.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best VPNs to find out about competing merchandise.

What are AirVPN’s options and companies?

Sam Singleton

AirVPN’s desktop software program is named Eddie, and proper off the bat, it appears prefer it was made within the early days of the web. AirVPN itself was established in 2010, however its Eddie shopper appears prefer it originates from the ’90s. It shirks the flashy person interfaces of VPNs like NordVPN and Surfshark in favor of a extra utilitarian design. That wouldn’t hassle me, aside from the truth that on this case, utilitarian doesn’t essentially imply user-friendly. 

Eddie’s left rail options six menu gadgets: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs. This interface appears precisely prefer it did in our final evaluation, and it’s a bit disappointing that AirVPN hasn’t executed something to replace it in that point.

As for the facet menu, the primary three gadgets are the one choices that can concern most customers. The Overview part is the place you log into the app and connect with a VPN community. The Servers tab reveals you an inventory of accessible servers with a bunch of key stats. These embody town location of a server, its latency, present server load, and variety of customers on that server proper now. On the proper facet bar you have got buttons to hook up with the chosen server, add it to an allowlist, add it to a denylist, or a refresh button for your entire server checklist.

Sam Singleton

Under the Servers tab, you have got a Countries tab, which lists all the 23 accessible nation places with information on the variety of servers for that nation, present server load for all servers in that nation, and variety of present customers for all servers in that nation.

There is lots of knowledge displayed right here and I sort of prefer it. In reality, among the finest options about AirVPN needs to be the extent of transparency in regards to the present situations of its community. This info is an enormous benefit for energy customers trying to discover the absolute best server in a given nation. It won’t be essentially the most intuitive for many who need a easy click-and-forget fashion VPN, however for knowledge nerds like me, I fairly loved all the info.

Sam Singleton

That’s about it for the fundamentals on AirVPN. But open the Settings menu and you may drill down deeper than the mines of Moria. There are a ton of configuration options right here and much too many for me to checklist. But among the coolest embody proxy configuration for Tor, DNS server customization, and community routing guidelines, amongst others.

AirVPN permits for 5 simultaneous machine connections, which can have been good a number of years in the past, however many companies corresponding to Private Internet Access and IPVanish at the moment are providing limitless simultaneous connections. 

The firm provides loads of subscription size choices from three days as much as three years. Its costs are all listed in Euros — nonetheless, on the time of writing, a normal one-year subscription prices about $53 USD, which is above common in comparison with different VPN companies. The one-month subscription nonetheless is about $7.50, which is definitely cheaper than different companies, so pricing is extra conducive to utilizing AirVPN within the short-term.

AirVPN accepts a lot of fee companies together with PayPal, bank cards, AmazonPay, and cryptocurrencies corresponding to Bitcoin, DogeCoin, LiteCoin, and Bitcoin Cash. 

How is AirVPN’s efficiency?

During my testing I rated speeds throughout AirVPN’s servers in 5 totally different nations all all over the world over the course of some days after which in contrast them to my baseline web velocity. AirVPN server speeds have been truly fairly good. Across all places examined, the common obtain velocity was 52 % in comparison with the bottom velocity and the common add velocity was a barely higher 66 % in comparison with the bottom.

Those speeds aren’t sufficient to take the “fastest VPN” crown, however I’m assured that AirVPN’s efficiency can be adequate for many use instances. What shocked me about AirVPN’s efficiency was the consistency in speeds. Usually a number of places aren’t fairly as much as snuff — sometimes servers situated additional away. I did encounter some weak speeds right here and there, however for essentially the most half places confirmed equally robust efficiency throughout every spherical of testing.

While utilizing any VPN each your obtain and add speeds are more likely to lower on account of latency between servers. It’s additionally value noting that VPN server speeds are extremely dependent upon space, time of use, and a mess of different components. Therefore your expertise might differ from these in my, or anybody else’s testing.

It’s additionally value noting which you could make the most of AirVPN’s beforehand talked about server load knowledge (displayed subsequent to the server title) to decide on one of the best server at any given second. Those with decrease server masses will sometimes result in sooner speeds. I discovered this knowledge to be extraordinarily helpful whereas utilizing AirVPN and it’s one thing I want extra VPN companies would show sooner or later.

Streaming service unblocking was disappointing to say the least. AirVPN wasn’t capable of entry any of the most important streaming companies corresponding to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, or Peacock, amongst others. Considering how many individuals hunt down a VPN in an effort to get round area locks, this can be a shockingly unhealthy miss on the a part of AirVPN. If you’re wanting to make use of a VPN to entry location-restricted content material, I like to recommend you look elsewhere.

How is AirVPN’s safety and privateness?

AirVPN

AirVPN makes use of the trade normal AES 256-bit encryption and when it comes to protocols it solely provides OpenVPN or WireGuard. This could be very totally different from most different VPN companies which provide three, 4, and even 5 totally different protocols for customers to select from. This was seemingly by design as one of many AirVPN staff’s authentic targets with their VPN was to offer the utmost privateness and safety. Both of those protocols strike a wonderful steadiness between efficiency and safety. In reality, when you’re utilizing a VPN for purely privateness or safety causes then AirVPN will make your connection really feel akin to Fort Knox. 

AirVPN additionally provides a kill change perform that labored completely nicely in my testing, reducing off when my connection dropped unexpectedly. Additionally, I confirmed that there have been no DNS leaks whereas utilizing any of the AirVPN servers so you may relaxation assured your true location won’t be compromised.

AirVPN’s privacy policy states that it doesn’t monitor your on-line exercise whereas linked to the community. Anything it does have to maintain, like your IP whereas utilizing the community, is saved solely in disk-less RAM servers and “only for the time being necessary to provide the service.”

The firm’s no-log coverage could be very clearly said and it’s forthcoming with what knowledge it does and doesn’t accumulate. That’s all nicely and good, however sadly it’s missing an impartial third-party audit, that means customers are left to take AirVPN at its phrase.

Third-party audits have gotten a little bit of a necessity for VPN suppliers these days and for an organization like AirVPN, which is so targeted on person privateness—the founders created the service to guard internet neutrality in any case—it’s disappointing that it has by no means undergone an impartial audit to again up its claims.

Is AirVPN value it?

AirVPN is sweet, however not nice. It has first rate and constant speeds, normal pricing, and loads of configuration choices for its service. It additionally makes the proper privateness guarantees and has a excessive stage of transparency about its community. That being stated, it appears to be falling additional and additional behind different companies with every new yr. Its interface is sorely outdated and unnecessarily convoluted. All of this can be a disgrace contemplating the altruistic causes AirVPN was created. You wish to see small groups with aspiring beliefs succeed, however in immediately’s world that normally isn’t sufficient.

AirVPN is a service that received’t maintain your hand and makes no compromises to attraction to a wider viewers. There is one thing to be stated for the AirVPN staff sticking to their authentic values, however within the present market, VPNs are used for far more than simply added safety. Features corresponding to the power to unblock geo-restricted content material and optimize connections for velocity have gotten simply as essential as privateness and safety. Users these days demand these items from their VPN supplier and consequently they could be higher served with a unique service.

Editor’s be aware: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this evaluation is topic to alter in an effort to precisely mirror the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our closing evaluation verdict can be famous on the high of this text.