Security experts and customers alike consider a variety of factors when choosing an antivirus software, aside from its protection capabilities. Cost as well as system impact, compatibility, usability and personal opinions regarding the practices of a company can be crucial factors that affect a person’s choice of an antivirus tool.
Avira located in Germany, is a great choice for anyone looking for an antivirus program that offers excellent test results. They also provide a monthly billing option. Avira’s antivirus program is incredibly good. test results across all categories, and offers a number of useful extras such as a password manager. Avira’s scans are light in background effect and aren’t heavy on resources. However, the speed drop is quite substantial at 53%, which is one of the heaviest in our tests.
It’s not easy to determine the best free AV program because many of our top choices come with a few disadvantages. For instance, Kaspersky’s strong background effect can lead to slowdowns that can reach 53%, whereas Avast’s full-scan slowdown is only slightly lower at 44%. On the other the other hand, Bitdefender has an excellent free version as well as a powerful subscription-based AV service that has excellent independent lab scores. Its feature set is very extensive and includes an VPN that helps it stand out from the competition.
The top-rated paid AV applications are F-Secure, McAfee Total Protection and Trend Micro Internet Security. While Microsoft Defender, which is built right into Windows 10 and 11, has a fairly light post-installation background effect of 9%, it’s also susceptible to massive slowdowns during full system scans.