Eddie vs AirVPN Suite/Hummingbird

[Blob5238 0]

The 'Download' area of the site for both Linux and macOS suggests either the Eddie client or the AirVPN Suite/Hummingbird client without further guidance. Adding to the confusion, Eddie can use Hummingbird. What are the differences between these two? To get the obvious superficial difference out of the way, Eddie has a GUI, but there seems to be more going on here.

I have some guesses about what's going on here but I'd prefer to get a more authoritative explanation for what's going on here.

Why do Eddie and AirVPN Suite/Hummingbird co-exist? Do they compete or do they have different intended roles? Is one a replacement for the other? Why might you want to pick one or the other? (Besides GUI.)

Thanks.

[Staff 10297]

Hello!

The AirVPN Suite was born as a light, Linux-only, compatible with both systemd and SysV init-like based systems, GUI-less, not depending on Mono and with tiny RAM footprint software alternative to Eddie. A robust client-daemon architecture was also designed (you can use it with Goldrect as a client and Bluetit as a daemon) as well as extensive and detailed user's and developer's reference manuals, which are missing in Eddie Linux edition. 

Given Suite's success with hardcore Linux customers, it evolved to include features not supported (currently) by Eddie, such as traffic splitting on an application basis. A TUI was also planned for Goldcrest years ago (*) and probably will see the light in the future. However the Suite lacks OpenVPN over SSH/SSL/TLS/Tor connection modes, OpenVPN to SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies out of the box connections, programmable events, a GUI (as mentioned) and a few other Eddie features. And of course Eddie is available for Windows and macOS too. 

Hummingbird is a stand alone binary, part of the Suite, which is useful when you need OpenVPN3-AirVPN library offering significant performance boost on OpenVPN 2.x especially on macOS (Hummingbird is the only component of the Suite ported to macOS too). Eddie is able to run OpenVPN 2.x, WireGuard or Hummingbird. Of course Hummingbird can connect over WireGuard library too and in that case WireGuard's performance will in most cases beat OpenVPN3-AirVPN, but if WireGuard is blocked in a network, or UDP is heavily shaped, then OpenVPN3-AirVPN library may come handy.

If you read the extensive Suite user's manual you will get more information and probably everything to need to know.

(*) a very nice TUI for Hummingbird was written in bash by the community member @nwlyoc https://airvpn.org/forums/topic/46717-interactive-wrapper-for-hummingbird-with-boot-script-and-default-network-lock 

Kind regards

 

[Blob5238 0]

Thank you. The historical context is very helpful for understanding why and how we got here.

[OWild 6]

On 9/5/2025 at 11:31 AM, Staff said:

Given Suite's success with hardcore Linux customers, it evolved to include features not supported (currently) by Eddie, such as traffic splitting on an application basis.

I have noticed that now hummingbird have split-tunneling and I would like to know if eddie plan to have this feature (despite the buzzword this feature is usefull).
Thanks for your answer.