Antivirus comparation

While the Mac does come under attack via side-loaded apps, it's rare, and if you download apps only from the Mac and iOS app stores and keep your guard up when clicking links and download files, you should be OK without an antivirus app on Apple devices. CNET editors pick the products and services we write about. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Best free Windows antivirus Microsoft Defender. Jump to details. See at Microsoft.

See at NortonLifeLock. See at Bitdefender. Best on-demand Windows malware removal Malwarebytes. See at Malwarebytes. Solid subscription antivirus alternative McAfee Total Protection. See at McAfee. Another good subscription option Trend Micro Maximum Security. See at Trend Micro. See at ESET. Alternative free Windows antivirus Sophos Home. See at Sophos. Our recommendations Looking for free antivirus protection, malware protection or virus detection, willing to pay for an antivirus program that offers broad internet security coverage across all your devices, including from ransomware and phishing, or need to remove a computer virus or malware from your PC right now?

Best free Windows antivirus. Microsoft Defender. Best antivirus subscription for Windows. Norton with LifeLock Select. Best free antivirus alternative for Windows. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition. Best on-demand Windows malware removal.

Solid subscription antivirus alternative. McAfee Total Protection. Another good subscription option. Trend Micro Maximum Security. Worthwhile subscription alternative. Alternative free Windows antivirus. Sophos Home. If you like American-made products, you might like PC Matic for your antivirus software. McAfee has a great deal on right now for its home antivirus software, McAfee Total protection. With that low price, you get the following:.

If you use cloud services to connect your devices or access files from different places, you should use Trend Micro. Its Hybrid Cloud Security can protect your physical devices and your virtual files with ease. For antivirus software as powerful as the one big businesses use, get Sophos Home Premium. Rather than waiting for a threat to arrive, Malwarebytes blocks it before it even reaches your computer.

Admins can deploy an on-premise version of Endpoint Protection to have control over every aspect of security. You can protect up to 10 devices at once, though the features are more focused on personal use.

Kaspersky offers the Small Office Security package for between five and 50 users. The core of the package is local scanning and real-time protection.

On top of that, Kaspersky offers internet, email and browser security to protect against some of the most common threats employees face. Kaspersky Small Office Security can get expensive depending on how many seats you need.

That said, each additional seat adds protection for desktop and mobile, as well as another password manager license. Who Should Use It: Businesses with fewer than 50 people that want proactive protection against common threats.

Avast offers several different antivirus packages for business. Teams of under 10 can protect themselves with Small Office Protection, which includes ransomware, email and internet protection. In addition to real-time protection across desktop, mobile and web, Bitdefender offers a suite of threat forecasts that can help you seal up any leaking holes before they become a problem.

Before an attack, admins can monitor things like the number of unencrypted web pages employees visit. After an attack, Bitdefender gives you the tools to break down and understand why the attack happened and how to avoid it in the future.

On top of that, Bitdefender leverages machine learning to predict and block threats before they can impact your business. Who Should Use It: Businesses that need to monitor and analyze threats before they can happen. Emsisoft employs four different protection layers to keep your data safe from nearly all threats. It starts with protection from malicious websites in the browser, protecting your business from the most significant threats.

After that, Emsisoft uses machine learning to detect zero-day malware and block it in real-time. That should cover most threats, but Emsisoft goes further.

The software uses behavior analysis to detect potentially malicious apps, and it uses that analysis to detect things like ransomware before it can encrypt your data. Outside of protection, Emsisoft includes a centralized web dashboard for seeing the protection across your business.

Here, you can manage your teams, set custom protection policies and much more. Who Should Use It: Anyone looking for holistic protection that you can manage through a centralized dashboard.

F-Secure takes a different approach to business antivirus. All of its services are centered around F-Secure Elements, which is a cloud-native platform that allows you to choose the protection you need. There are four services available, each protecting a different aspect of businesses. For most, Endpoint Protection is the most critical element. Powered by AI and based in the cloud, Endpoint Protection can help your business reduce attack surfaces, identify threats from community-sourced data and defend your data in the event a breach happens.

Malwarebytes can protect as little as a single device and as many as devices. Those include real-time protection on desktop, ransomware and phishing protection and zero-day exploit detection. If you have a larger team or need extra security, Malwarebytes has you covered. The premium package includes threat isolation and recovery, ransomware rollback and the ability to add server security.

From protecting a few devices in a small office to defending dozens of devices from large attacks, Malwarebytes has something for everyone. Who Should Use It: Malwarebytes offers a scalable platform that fits in the small office as well as it does in the sprawling enterprise. Kaspersky's useful extra features include a file shredder, an on-screen keyboard and an email scanner.

The password manager and VPN service are fairly limited, however, unless you pay. Read our full Kaspersky Security Cloud Free review. Bitdefender has officially discontinued Antivirus Free Edition, and it will be supported only until June 30, We still love it and you can still get it , but proceed at your own risk. Compared to premium paid antivirus programs that are big, heavy and loaded with extra bells and whistles, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is like a '60's sports car, stripped to the essentials but still providing plenty of power.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition offers nothing but the basics. There's no password manager, no gaming mode, no quick scans and no scan scheduling. You can manage the software from the program's System Tray icon, but you don't really need to interact with Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition after its installation.

Yet Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition has the excellent Bitdefender malware-detection engine, which sits just below Kaspersky and Norton in the lab-test rankings. It's the best free antivirus software if you want a security solution that you can set up and then forget about. It's also perfect if you need to protect the computer of an elderly relative but don't have time to manage antivirus software from afar.

Read our full Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition review. Microsoft's built-in antivirus software is now a heavy hitter. While Windows Defender, aka Microsoft Defender Antivirus, doesn't quite beat Norton or Kaspersky in malware-protection lab tests, it comes out ahead of Avast, AVG and most other free antivirus products while operating almost entirely behind the scenes.

You won't be getting many extra features with Windows Defender itself, yet Windows 10 does have parental controls, a gaming mode and protections for its own Edge and Internet Explorer browsers. There's no built-in VPN, but you also won't be bothered by pop-ups trying to upsell you to paid antivirus software. As for a password manager, there's a stealth one built into the Microsoft Authenticator app for Android and iOS that syncs with the Edge browser, as long as you're signed into your Microsoft account on all devices.

We still recommend going for Kaspersky Security Cloud Free, which has even less of a system impact, better malware protection and more useful extras, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using Windows Defender as your primary antivirus solution. Read our full Windows Defender review. Avast Free Antivirus has the best assortment of extra goodies of any free antivirus program, including a hardened browser, a gaming mode, a Wi-Fi network scanner and a recently added ransomware shield.

Unfortunately, the unlimited password manager has been discontinued. The program is also very customizable, letting you tweak its appearance and functions to suit your style. It even offers limited access to Avast's VPN service. However, Avast Free Antivirus caused a pretty heavy system load in our testing and its scans took a long time.

It also kept nagging us to upgrade to Avast's paid antivirus protection, and played bait-and-switch with features that looked like they were free but weren't. Most significant of all, the malware protection in Avast Free Antivirus is a peg down from Kaspersky's or Bitdefender's, whose free programs also bothered us less about paid upgrades and had lighter system loads.

Read our full Avast Free Antivirus review. AVG shares a decent, if unspectacular, malware-detection engine with its corporate sibling Avast while having a much lighter system-performance impact. While the latter is almost a free security suite with lots of bells and whistles, AVG AntiVirus Free is the quiet, neglected child that gets the hand-me-downs.

The good news is that AVG's wide range of customization options and its file shredder and system optimizer are still available, and its interface is open and easy to use.

Worst of all, given its middling malware detection and dearth of extra features, there's no convincing reason to choose AVG AntiVirus Free over the built-in and overall better Microsoft Defender. Malwarebytes Free, formerly called Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, is not antivirus software. Instead, it's a very useful malware-removal tool. What's the difference? Unlike antivirus software, Malwarebytes Free can't prevent a PC from being infected. But it does an excellent job of cleaning out malware that's already on your system, as well as removing legal adware and potentially unwanted programs that antivirus software often ignores.

Malwarebytes Free doesn't interfere with any antivirus software that's already installed, so it's perfectly safe to install it alongside one of our recommended brands. Just don't upgrade to the paid Malwarebytes Premium, true antivirus software that does poorly in lab tests and which will conflict with other AV programs. We recommend Malwarebytes Free as a complement to any of the best antivirus programs, free or paid.

Read our full Malwarebytes Free review. Before you buy antivirus protection, figure out what you need. If you have young children at home, then consider midrange antivirus products, most of which include parental controls. Do you want an all-encompassing security solution? Or are you a techie who understands and the risks of using the internet? Then a low-priced basic program might be all you need. MORE: How to buy antivirus software.

Once you've got your priorities figured out, then determine how many machines you'll need to protect. Most vendors offer single-device licenses for Windows PCs.

But multi-device, multi-platform licenses for five, 10 or more computers and mobile devices are available in midrange and premium antivirus packages, covering Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and sometimes even Linux.

Some vendors offer plans that cover an unlimited number of devices. Gone are the days when you could walk into a store and pay a one-time fee for an antivirus product that came in a box off a shelf.

All the vendors now sell their software licenses as yearly or multiyear subscriptions. The upside is that you'll always get the latest software, which you can download and install straight from the internet.

Many antivirus products are sold online for much less than their list prices. But each brand offers basic, midrange and premium configurations of features and pricing, with every step up adding more features. Think of autos at a dealership. You can get a base-model car that will get you from place to place just fine.

For a few grand more, you can buy a car with satellite radio, but no heated side-view mirrors, alloy wheels or in-car Wi-Fi hotspot. Or you can spend a lot more to get a loaded car with all the fixin's.

Antivirus makers also hope you'll spring for extra options, whether you need them or not. The one thing you can't trade up to is a bigger engine: All the Windows antivirus products in a given brand's lineup will use the same malware-detection engine and provide the same level of essential protection. The software will have essential malware protection and maybe a password manager or a two-way firewall.

They generally add parental controls, some of which are very good, plus a few other features such as webcam protection. They often include multi-device licenses and antivirus software for Mac and Android devices. At the top are the premium "security suites," which toss in all the extra security tools an antivirus brand can offer, such as password managers, VPN client software, backup software, online storage and even identity-protection services.

The password managers are often quite good, but the online storage can be paltry and the VPN services often don't give you unlimited data. We've collected the best premium antivirus packages on this list of the best internet security suites.