AirVPN vs OVPN

Two small European services, neither of which has ever been audited by an outside firm, both asking to be trusted on evidence of a different kind. The kinds are not equally strong.

Two answers to a question neither has been asked formally

OVPN's answer is a court case. In 2020 a court demanded customer data and the company had none to give; it fought the injunction and won on exactly that basis. It builds and owns its servers, runs them without disks, and carries insurance specifically to fund defending a legal demand, which is an unusual line item and a revealing one.

AirVPN's answer is continuous disclosure: open-source clients and a live public monitor showing what every server is doing at any moment. That is more visibility into day-to-day operation than almost anything here offers, and it is not the same as a demand arriving and going away empty.

A court case that already happened outranks a monitor that shows what is happening now, because the question is what the company does when compelled.

Who owns each of them

OVPN was acquired in May 2023 by an American group now trading as Point Wild, which sells several other VPN brands including Hotspot Shield — a service with no independent audit and a kill switch that let unencrypted traffic past during a crash. The 2020 court case happened under the previous owner and remains true; the company that would answer a demand tomorrow is a different one.

AirVPN is AirVPN di Paolo Brini, registered in Perugia, and is owned by the person whose name is on it.

Both are inside the fourteen-country intelligence agreement — Italy and Sweden — so neither is helped by its address.

On product, OVPN has a kill switch, multi-hop, ad blocking, memory-only servers, obfuscation and streaming support, and allows four devices on the monthly plan. AirVPN has port forwarding, ad blocking, obfuscation, a route into Tor and IPv6 protection, includes everything on every plan, and takes no email address — but has no iPhone or iPad app at all, and Italian residents may not use it.

OVPN is the quicker of the two; AirVPN measures at the slower end of everything here.

Which should you choose?

Choose OVPN if the 2020 court case is what convinces you and the change of ownership does not, or if you need an Apple device covered.

Choose AirVPN if independence from a larger group matters, you want port forwarding included, and there is no iPhone to cover.