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It’s true that Windows comes with a built-in antivirus utility. If you have nothing else between you and the slavering hordes of malware ready to attack, it steps up to your defense. But if you install a third-party antivirus, it goes dormant. Why? Because the best third-party antivirus tools are just plain better. And some of those excellent choices cost the same as the built-in Microsoft Defender—nothing. We’ve rounded up a selection of powerful, free antivirus tools for your consideration.
Your antivirus should certainly have the ability to root out existing malware, but its ongoing task is to prevent ransomware, botnets, Trojans, and other malicious programs from getting a foothold. All the free antivirus programs we’ve selected offer real-time malware protection. Some take the fight to the browser, working to ensure you never even visit a malware-hosting site or get fooled into turning over your credentials to a phishing site.
Believe it or not, some of these freebies even beat all but the best for-pay equivalents. And since they’re free, you can try several before settling on your favorite. Read on for thumbnails of our full reviews, followed by how we evaluate free antivirus software and how to choose the right one.
Avast has been supplying antivirus protection for as long as there’s been an antivirus industry. With Avast One Essential you get award-winning antivirus protection for free, and much more besides. All four of the independent testing labs we follow include Avast in their reporting, and it aces almost every test. It also takes high scores in our own hands-on testing. Other protective services include a permission-based ransomware protection system, a basic firewall, and a bandwidth-limited VPN.
Avast does reserve some features for paying customers. For example, the free edition will scan and identify apps with missing security patches and update them at your command, but won’t keep your apps updated automatically. Getting a list of junk files and broken registry items doesn’t cost anything; cleaning up the found mess is a premium feature.
Many free antivirus utilities work only on the Windows platform. Avast has varying degrees of protection for macOS, Android, and iOS. Its macOS edition earns high scores from the labs, and its ransomware protection, browser trace cleanup, and VPN work just as they do on Windows. On Android you get antivirus, VPN, junk cleanup, and privacy protection, among other features, though anti-theft is noticeably absent. As is common, protection under iOS is limited, but it does include VPN, filtering fraudulent and malicious websites, and extra protection for your photos.
If you consider security software interesting rather than tedious, if a tight budget is the only reason you don’t buy a full security suite, Avast One Essential is perfect for you. The commercial Avast One suite does more, naturally, but this free edition is packed with features. The fact that you can use it to protect all your devices, not just Windows PCs, is icing on the cake.
In 2016, Avast acquired AVG. Now, both products use precisely the same antivirus technology under the hood. When you install AVG AntiVirus Free, you’re getting the same powerful protection you get from Avast. The two have different aggregate lab scores because not all the labs report on AVG.
Like Avast, AVG protects against ransomware by banning all unauthorized changes to protected files. And like Avast, AVG’s free edition will identify junk files and other performance drains but won’t fix any problems unless you pay. Bonus features include a hardened browser, a deal-finding tool for shopping, and a simple network security inspector.
Not every user wants the nearly suite-level features of Avast One Essential, and not everyone needs cross-platform protection. If your focus is on powerful protection against both malware and malicious or fraudulent websites, AVG offers the same protection as Avast but in a simpler, more traditional package. The user interface can be important, too. Both Avast and AVG have a widespread international presence, but they’re popular in different regions.
Bitdefender Antivirus Free for Windows offers basic protection that’s precisely the core of Editors’ Choice Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. In truth, it looks more like Bitdefender’s suite, but with many features disabled. In testing, lack of Ransomware Remediation made no difference because other protective layers defeated all the real-world ransomware samples. The unusual defense timeline shows exactly how Bitdefender stopped an attack, and its defense against malicious and fraudulent (phishing) websites is second to none.
If you spring for the commercial antivirus, you get vastly more features, more than found in some security suite products. Among these are a hardened desktop for secure browsing, a Rescue Environment to recover from malware that disables Windows, and a Wi-Fi security analyzer. None of these come for free.
Bitdefender has an excellent reputation in the security world, and the company’s researchers frequently report on important discoveries. Relying on such a company for antivirus protection is a smart move, but you may well be put off by the cornucopia of features in the commercial edition. In that case, try Bitdefender Antivirus Free, which gives you the full core protection without any possibly confusing trimmings.
Like Avast’s freebie, Avira Free Security is a free version of a full security suite. All the features are visible, but many are locked away. Three of the four labs that we follow cover Avira’s antivirus technology in their latest reports, and Avira earns mostly excellent scores. It didn’t do as well in our hands-on tests, but when our results don’t jibe with the labs, we defer to the lab results.
Avira does scan for apps that are vulnerable due to missing security patches, but leaves you to fix any found problems manually. Other features include a simple password manager, a shopping deal-finder, and active prevention of ad trackers, as well as a bandwidth-limited VPN and a comprehensive privacy settings checker.
Do you want a full-on security suite rather than a bare-bones antivirus? Can your nerves handle the occasional upsell windows when you accidentally click a feature that’s not free? Avira Free Security may be just the thing for you.
No discussion of free antivirus software would be complete without Microsoft Defender Antivirus, formerly known as Windows Defender. If you don’t have a third-party antivirus, or if your antivirus subscription lapses, Defender takes up the banner of your protection. If you do add or revive some other antivirus, Defender quietly retreats to the sidelines.
That’s not to say we’re super-enthusiastic about using Defender for your protection. It gets good scores in some lab tests, but tanks others. Likewise in our hands-on tests it earns some high scores and some very low ones. In typical Microsoft fashion, its protection against fraudulent and malicious websites only works in Edge. It’s good, but you can do better.
Hey, you! The one who’s falling asleep reading this article. The one who deeply does not care about antivirus. This one’s for you! To take advantage of its protection, you have to do exactly nothing. For the right person, that’s an ideal solution.
Kaspersky Free is the free anchor for the Kaspersky line; the not-free Kaspersky Standard, Plus, and Premium all build on the same antivirus engine. Kaspersky’s antivirus prowess generally awes the independent testing labs, who routinely assign it perfect or near-perfect ratings. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend it anymore. Here’s why.
For years, Kaspersky has faced accusations and censure based on its Russian origins, though none of the accusations have come backed by hard evidence of malicious behavior. We at PCMag always focused on the capabilities of the security tools, not on the brouhaha around the company. However, the current war in Ukraine has raised the stakes. Governments and third parties are cutting ties with Kaspersky. The FCC labeled Kaspersky a national security risk, and Canada recently banned Kaspersky from government-owned devices.
After consideration, we can no longer recommend you purchase Kaspersky security programs or even use them for free. We’ve left the reviews in place, with a warning, since they provide useful information. But at least for now, we’re removing Kaspersky from our “Best for” lists.
If free antivirus tools are so good at protecting internet security, why should anybody pay? For one thing, many of these are free only for noncommercial use. If you want to protect your business, you must pony up for the paid edition. You should probably consider upgrading to a full security suite at that point. After all, it’s your business’s security on the line.
Even for personal use, most for-pay antivirus tools offer more than their free counterparts—sometimes a lot more. For example, the paid edition of ZoneAlarm adds protection against malicious and fraudulent websites, which the free version lacks. And Panda reserves quite a few features for paying customers: firewall protection, application control, cross-platform support, and detection of insecure Wi-Fi connections.
In addition, many companies don’t offer full-scale tech support for users of their free editions. The first time you need extra help digging a particularly stubborn piece of malware out of your system, you might regret the lack of support.
Around the world, researchers at independent antivirus testing labs spend their days putting antivirus tools to the test. Some of these labs regularly release public reports on their findings. We follow four such labs closely: AV-Comparatives, MRG-Effitas, SE Labs, and AV-Test Institute.
Security companies typically pay for the privilege of being included in testing. In return, the labs supply detailed reports that can help improve their antiviruses. The number of labs that include a particular vendor serves as a measure of significance. In each case, the lab considered the program important enough to test, and the vendor felt the price was worthwhile. The labs don’t necessarily test a vendor’s free edition, but most vendors pack full protection into the free offering, enhancing premium versions with additional features.
In addition to carefully perusing results from the independent labs, we also run our own hands-on malware protection test. We expose each antivirus to a collection of malware samples, including a variety of different malware types, and note its reaction. Typically, the antivirus will wipe out most of the samples on sight and detect some of the remaining ones when we try to launch them. We derive a malware-blocking score from 0 to 10 points based on how thoroughly the antivirus protects the test system from these samples.
Since we use the same samples month after month, the malware-blocking test doesn’t measure an antivirus tool’s ability to detect brand-new threats. In a separate test, we attempt to download malware from 100 very new malicious URLs supplied by London-based testing lab MRG-Effitas, typically less than a few days old. We note whether the antivirus blocked all access to the URL, wiped out the malicious payload during download, or did nothing.
If you’re interested in learning more about our testing techniques, you’re welcome to read more about how we test security software.
Just about every antivirus scans files on access to make sure malware can’t launch, and it also scans the entire system on demand or on a schedule you set. Once cleaning and scheduling are done, blocking all access to malware-hosting URLs is another good way to avoid trouble. Many extend that protection to steer users away from fraudulent websites and phishing sites that try to steal login credentials for financial sites and other sensitive sites. A few rate links in search results, flagging any dangerous or iffy ones.
Behavior-based detection, a feature of some antiviruses, is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it can detect malware that’s never been seen before. On the other hand, if it’s not done right, it can baffle the user with messages about perfectly legitimate programs.
Any antivirus should eliminate spyware along with other types of malware, but some include features designed specifically for spyware protection. Features like encryption to protect your sensitive data and webcam control to prevent remote peeping show up in commercial editions, not free ones. But some free editions include features like a simple on-screen keyboard to foil keyloggers.
One easy way to keep your PC protected is to install all security updates, both for Windows and for browsers and other popular applications. Windows 11 makes it easier than ever to stay up to date, but there are plenty of security holes in older Windows versions, in popular apps, and in add-ons. Scanning for vulnerabilities in the form of missing updates is a feature most often found in commercial antivirus tools, but it does turn up in some free ones. In the list below, you can see which programs include these useful features.
Numerous free utilities devoted entirely to ransomware protection have come on the scene in the last few years. Alas, many of those have fallen by the wayside, among them Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware, Cybereason RansomFree, CyberSight RansomStopper, and Heilig Defense RansomOff. In any case, these are useful companion utilities, but they don’t do the job of a full-scale antivirus utility.
There are also numerous free antivirus utilities that work solely to clean up existing malware infestations. You bring out these cleanup-only tools when you have a nasty malware problem. When the malware’s gone, they have no further use since they offer no ongoing protection. Our favorite in this category is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and it’s one you should try if you’ve got a malware problem. But since they’re free, you can keep trying others if the first one doesn’t do the job. When the scare is over, you’ll need a full-blown antivirus for ongoing protection.
Avast One Essential takes the place once held by Avast Free Antivirus as Editors’ Choice for free antivirus utility. It appears in lab reports from all four labs we follow with almost universally perfect scores, and it includes many suite-level features. AVG Antivirus Free uses the same antivirus engine as Avast and provides its own collection of useful bonus features—it, too, is an Editors’ Choice. If you do have a little cash in your budget for security, the best paid antivirus software does offer more and better protection. If not, try a few of these free tools and see which one you like best.
Worried you might already be infected? Check out our article on the signs you have malware.
When the IBM PC was new, I served as the president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years. That’s how I met PCMag’s editorial team, who brought me on board in 1986. In the years since that fateful meeting, I’ve become PCMag’s expert on security, privacy, and identity protection, putting antivirus tools, security suites, and all kinds of security software through their paces.
Before my current security gig, I supplied PCMag readers with tips and solutions on using popular applications, operating systems, and programming languages in my “User to User” and “Ask Neil” columns, which began in 1990 and ran for almost 20 years. Along the way I …
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