There’s basically no excuse for not having top-notch antivirus software on your personal computers these days.
You have multiple well-rated — and no-cost — options to choose from, as PCMag’s latest ratings of free antivirus programs illustrate.
The publication tested and reviewed 17 free programs and examined the results of other independent labs that have tested the programs.
The best free antivirus software
PCMag awarded its “Editor’s Choice” honor to Kaspersky Security Cloud Free. It earned an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 from PCMag, making it the only program out of the 17 to earn a rating of more than 4 out of 5.
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Kaspersky Security Cloud Free stands out for getting “perfect or near-perfect” scores from independent testing labs.
Neil J. Rubenking, PCMag’s lead analyst for security, explains: Drivers adaptec aic-7899 ultra160 pci scsi card.
“Around the world, independent antivirus testing labs devote tremendous resources to evaluating antivirus products. I follow four labs that release periodic reports on their findings, and Kaspersky has always taken perfect or near-perfect scores from all four. It’s true that the labs didn’t specifically test the free edition, but given that free users now get all antivirus features, including the behavior-based System Watch, the results should be the same.”
Additionally, four programs earned overall ratings of 4 out of 5: Drivers acer h243h.
- Avast Free Antivirus (which PCMag also deemed “best for wealth of bonus features”)
- AVG AntiVirus Free (“best for few-frills protection”)
- Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (“best for set-and-forget protection”)
- Sophos Home Free (“best for managed family protection”)
Kaspersky Free Antivirus
Windows Defender
Windows computers come with Microsoft Windows Defender Security Center, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should rely on it.
PCMag gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5, noting that while the program’s scores from independent testing labs have “significantly improved,” there are better free options. Rubenking continues:
“The very best free antivirus utilities give you even more protection, and they earn great scores from the independent testing labs.”
Note that if you have a Windows computer and opt to use a nonWindows antivirus program, Windows Defender will go dormant to avoid conflict, PCMag says.
Should you pay for antivirus protection?
PCMag notes that paid antivirus programs offer more protection and better protection than free versions. Whether you should pay for such protection comes down to your budget.
If a paid program isn’t in your budget, perhaps try a few of the free programs to see which you like best.
One exception is for business computers. PCMag notes that free antivirus programs are often free only for noncommercial use, meaning only for use on personal computers.
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- Compare the best free antivirus software in 2020
- Explore which antivirus software ranked highest and why
- Choose the best free protection for your device
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1. Panda Free Antivirus — Best Overall Free Windows Antivirus
Panda Free Antivirus is lightweight, secure, and easy-to-use. Everything is laid out on the dashboard in a beautiful and intuitive way. It’s great for beginners who don’t want to stress a few lot of advanced settings — just open it up and let it run.
Panda could be one among the lesser-known brands on this list, but its antivirus scanner scored exceptionally well in my tests, with a 100% virus detection rate. The included firewall is additionally pretty powerful, blocking more intrusions than the other free antivirus I tested, including the Windows firewall.
I really like that Panda Free Antivirus comes with a virtual private network (VPN). I always recommend employing a VPN if you’re on a public Wi-Fi network — not only is all of your data exposed to the network administrator, unsecured Wi-Fi networks are notoriously easy to hack into. While Panda’s VPN is free, it’s a knowledge limit of 150 MB per day — this is often good for browsing the online and sending emails, but it’s not nearly enough data for things like streaming or file sharing. you’ll only get unlimited VPN data on the Panda Dome Premium plan.
2. Avira Free Antivirus — Best for Internet Security
Avira Free Antivirus not only lets us experience Avira’s legendary German-engineered antivirus technology, it also includes Avira Browser Safety — an extension for Firefox and Chrome which protects against malicious websites and phishing scams.
Avira’s antivirus engine operates within the cloud, meaning that the majority of its malware detection and analysis doesn’t actually happen on your PC. This cloud-based technology has two main advantages.
First, it means Avira can keep its methods secret by only fighting malware on its own servers. This puts Avira one step before the hackers in the least times because hackers won’t know what Avira knows.
Second, it means Avira can maintain a particularly low “footprint” — it demands only a few system resources. In fact, Avira has one among the littlest and lightest antivirus engines of all the main antivirus brands.
And because Avira runs so efficiently, even many older Windows PCs can run Avira Free Antivirus without much impact on performance. If your PC sometimes feels slow and sluggish when you’re using applications, Avira might be your antivirus solution.
3. Sophos Home Free — Best for Parental Controls
There’s many bad stuff online that basic antivirus software won’t devour . also as protecting your devices and private information from viruses, Sophos Home Free may be a good free antivirus that helps protect your kids from the parts of the online that you simply won’t want them to ascertain .
Sophos Home Free includes great parental controls — something that sometimes comes only in premium internet security packages, like Norton 360 Deluxe. Parental controls allow us to monitor how our youngsters use their devices and restrict which websites they will access.
Sophos Home Free also includes real-time protection against malware and a browser extension that keeps you faraway from visiting malicious websites.
You can install the free version of Sophos on up to three devices. this is often very generous for a free product, but if you’ve got more devices, you’ll got to upgrade — luckily
4. Kaspersky Security Cloud (Free) — Best for Added Features
Kaspersky Security Cloud — Free is a powerful free antivirus suite. It includes Kaspersky’s cloud-based malware scanning engine, which caught 100% of the threats I threw at it during testing.
Not only does Security Cloud scan for malware, perform system cleanup and use active scanning to stop new threats, but it also provides complete privacy protection with a VPN, a password manager, and dark web scanning.
Best Free Antivirus 2020 Reddit
The VPN is pretty good — it didn’t slow my computer down considerably , and allowed me to unblock geo-restricted streaming content with servers round the globe. Unfortunately, there’s a 200 MB daily limit, but that’s better than the 150 MB daily data on Panda’s free VPN.
The limit on the password manager may be a bit worse — only 15 separate logins are often saved, which isn’t nearly enough for many users. Still, if you’ve got 15 logins which are your highest priority, the password manager generates and auto-fills extremely complex passwords for another layer of security.
Acer akpire one driver download for windows. The dark web scanner is straightforward , but effective. After I gave it my essential logins, it regularly checked the database at Have I Been Pwned to ascertain if my information was getting shared round the dark web.
5. Bitdefender Antivirus Free — Best for Simple Windows Protection
Bitdefender’s Antivirus Free may be a great choice for users trying to find an antivirus scanner that they don’t got to believe after installation. Bitdefender is meant to run within the background, with only essential notifications just in case of suspicious program activity. Malware scans, detection, and removal all happen automatically, unless you opt to regulate the settings.
If you’re trying to find extra features sort of a password manager, parental controls, dark web monitoring, or a VPN, this is often not the proper product for you (you’ll need something like Norton 360 for that). However, it’s still specialized antivirus software, and its minimal design means it won’t slow your PC down in the least .
As we saw in our full review, Bitdefender’s malware scanner is one among the strongest on the market, and therefore the Advanced Protection feature now extends to ransomware detection — any suspicious behavior on your PC will get frozen immediately. This scanner is basically fast — malware files and ransomware processes were all caught just moments after I downloaded or unzipped them.
Kaspersky Free
The anti-phishing and fraud protection features are pretty good also . Bitdefender flagged all of the newest known phishing sites and alerted me once I was asked to enter private data onto 3 different suspicious web forms.