Best free antivirus software
You can save yourself from £45 to £118 a year by choosing a good free antivirus program. But be careful – we've found that some free options that are annoying to use, have irritating pop-ups and simply aren't as good as rivals when it comes to protecting your data.
So you need to make sure the software you install is one of the best, which you can do by using the results of our tough, independent lab tests in our table below. Do note that we haven't given Kaspersky Best Buy status even though it scores highly enough to be eligible. See Why aren't Kaspersky packages Best Buys? for more information.
Scroll past our table to find out more about the software that scored highly in our tests.
| Kaspersky Security Cloud | 80% | ||||||
| Avast Free Antivirus | 77% | ||||||
| AVG AntiVirus Free | 76% | ||||||
| Avira Free Security | 72% | ||||||
Kaspersky Security Cloud, 80%
- Pros: Excellent malware and phishing protection, easy to use
- Cons: Scans could be better
Although this Kaspersky product scores highly enough to be a Best Buy, it doesn't have Best Buy status. Go to Why aren't Kaspersky packages Best Buys? to find out more.
If you don’t mind a basic package that simply protects you from malware without extra features, Kaspersky’s free Security Cloud tier is the best free product we tested this year.
Its protection against running malware is excellent and its phishing protection via a browser add-on is very effective. It also proved adept at preventing ransomware from running and locking up our test files.
It’s also easy to use, partially due to the lack of features. Those that remain are easy to find and use. While it's a free product, we didn’t find the messages reminding us we could upgrade to a premium version of the product particularly onerous, and there is even an option to turn them off forever if you have no intention of paying.
It’s not all roses, though. It wasn’t particularly brilliant at scanning for malware already on our test computers, especially those designed for Windows and MacOS. It was at least effective at spotting malware designed for Android devices.
Verdict: Brilliant free protection
Avast Free Antivirus, 77%
- Pros: Excellent protection
- Cons: Lots of locked features, some false positives
- Availability: Download from Avast.com
Avast is the second-best free product we tested and it does the basics really well, with excellent protection from running viruses and phishing attacks. It’s a bit overzealous with safe files, marking some possibly malicious more often than we’d like.
We also don’t like the number of locked features that crop up as you’re navigating around the software, as this makes it a bit confusing and annoying to use. Particularly irksome is the persistent insistence that you have a privacy-related problem on your computer, but the only way to find out what it is is to pay for an upgrade.
Verdict: Solid free protection
AVG Antivirus Free, 76%
- Pros: Strong virus and phishing protection
- Cons: A few false positives, lots of locked features
- Availability: Download from AVG.com
AVG is one of the best-known providers of free antivirus, and this year it’s done reasonably well. It has the same strengths and weaknesses of the paid-for product – great virus protection, but overzealous false positives and download protection that wasn’t quite as good as the very best – and it also has too many locked features and pop-ups for our liking.
Verdict: Decent, but better free options are available
Avira Antivirus Free, 72%
- Pros: Good malware and phishing protection
- Cons: Annoying pop-ups in both versions, clunky menus, scans could be more effective
- Availability: Download from Avira.com
Avira Free and its paid-for offering, Pro, scored the same in our tests. Protection-wise, they're identical, with Avira adept at blocking malware and phishing attempts. Its scans weren’t among the best we tested and both have clunky menu designs that we think a lot of people will struggle with.
Even more annoyingly, both pieces of the software featured far too many pop-ups suggesting you pay for extra features, which is particularly galling if you’ve already paid.
Verdict: Pop-up heavy
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