AirVPN was founded in 2010 in Perugia, Italy, by a small collective of hacktivists, activists, and hackers, with the assistance of two lawyers. The service started as a free project and transitioned to a commercial entity around 2012, with Paolo Brini as its owner. Unlike most VPN companies, AirVPN operates without a marketing budget and has no corporate parent company. The organization exclusively operates its VPN service and related projects focused on net neutrality and censorship circumvention, and has made recurring financial contributions to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, European Digital Rights, the Tor Project, and Wikimedia.
Based in Italy, AirVPN falls under the jurisdiction of a Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance member. However, Italy currently imposes no mandatory VPN data retention requirements, and AirVPN has publicly stated it would challenge any data retention demands through the European Court of Justice. The company maintains a strict no-logs policy, claiming it does not inspect, log, or store activity traffic, traffic content, or IP addresses. Server infrastructure is RAM-based, meaning session data cannot persist beyond reboot. That said, these claims have never been verified by an independent third-party audit — a significant gap given that formal audits have become standard practice among leading VPN providers.
On the protocol front, AirVPN was long synonymous with OpenVPN, offering a level of configurability unmatched in the industry — including 4096-bit Diffie-Hellman key exchange, AES-256-GCM encryption, and Perfect Forward Secrecy with keys rotated every 60 minutes. The provider was notably slow to adopt WireGuard, introducing beta support around late 2021 and expanding it gradually. The Eddie client now supports both OpenVPN and WireGuard, with the latter using ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption. Eddie is fully open-source and available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS. Linux users benefit from a full graphical interface, which is uncommon. Advanced features include OpenVPN over SSH and SSL tunneling, VPN-through-Tor routing, DNS blocklists, and domain-level traffic exclusion.
The server network is AirVPN's most obvious weakness. With approximately 250 to 264 servers across 23 countries, it is dwarfed by major competitors. Coverage is heavily European, with limited presence in the Americas and Asia, and virtually none in the Middle East or Africa. There are no dedicated IP options. Speed performance is mixed. BleepingComputer measured around 176 Mbps on dedicated lines, with home broadband tests showing 20-25 percent drops on nearby servers and up to 50 percent on distant ones. ProPrivacy reported an average of roughly 44 Mbps. WireGuard has improved throughput compared to the OpenVPN-only era, but AirVPN still lags behind the fastest providers.
Streaming is a weak point. Most reviewers found AirVPN unable to unblock Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, or BBC iPlayer. Results with Netflix were inconsistent — vpnMentor reported partial success while BleepingComputer found it blocked. This is not surprising for a provider that does not invest in the constant cat-and-mouse game of streaming geo-unblocking. Torrenting, by contrast, is where AirVPN excels. All servers permit P2P traffic, and the service supports port forwarding with up to 20 ports per server — a feature increasingly rare among VPN providers. vpnMentor timed a 709 MB download at 37 minutes, improving to under 29 minutes with port forwarding enabled.
Pricing is straightforward and honest. Plans range from around 7 EUR per month down to approximately 2.75 EUR per month on a three-year commitment, with a three-day trial available for 2 EUR and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Notably, AirVPN does not inflate renewal prices, a practice common across the industry. Payment methods include credit cards, PayPal, and multiple cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero for anonymous purchasing.
The main criticism across all reviews is usability. The Eddie client, while powerful, presents a complex interface dense with technical terminology. Server selection is not as intuitive as competitors, and documentation assumes a high level of networking knowledge. Customer support is limited to forums and a ticket system with response times up to 24 hours — there is no live chat. AirVPN allows only five simultaneous connections, which falls below the current industry trend toward unlimited devices. The community forums are active but have drawn occasional criticism for aggressive moderation.
AirVPN occupies a unique niche. It is not a VPN for casual users who want one-click streaming access or a polished mobile experience. It is a service built by privacy idealists for people who understand and value what it offers: open-source transparency, deep technical control, honest pricing, and a genuine commitment to digital rights activism.