Introduction
To begin with let me say this: there is no best antivirus out there. Why do I say this? Any product that you take will behave differently against various virus samples since the AV engines and other components incorporated in them are of different technologies.
While one product might have higher detection ratio, another might have better malicious URL blocking or virtualization techniques, yet another might have lesser impact on system performance and so on.
Read more about Antivirus Engine and other related details at the end of this article.
Rated Products

Platforms/Download: [field_blackberry_download] | Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 8.2
George.J
Our Rating: 5/5 |
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- Totally free, light on resources, extremely fast scan times and pre-configuration protection modes
- Smooth running installer with no adware, pleasing UI and comes with many themes
- Fast updates/fixes and excellent customer service with immediate replies
- Great signatures with multiple engines and in-house cloud protection
- Web protection addon, browsing locking, webcam, sandbox and usb protection modules
- Online shopping protection, malicious URL protection and network threat blocking
- Includes Glasswire Firewall and Windows patch-up components
- Great detection rates, with very high zero day protection
- Speedup and clean-up tools might not be for everyone (not present in Essentials version)
- Bitdefender or Avira engines not enabled by default
- Might encounter few false positives
- PUP [Potentially Unwanted Programs] detection needs to improve
Read more...
- Totally free, light on resources, extremely fast scan times and pre-configuration protection modes
- Smooth running installer with no adware, pleasing UI and comes with many themes
- Fast updates/fixes and excellent customer service with immediate replies
- Great signatures with multiple engines and in-house cloud protection
- Web protection addon, browsing locking, webcam, sandbox and usb protection modules
- Online shopping protection, malicious URL protection and network threat blocking
- Includes Glasswire Firewall and Windows patch-up components
- Great detection rates, with very high zero day protection
- Speedup and clean-up tools might not be for everyone (not present in Essentials version)
- Bitdefender or Avira engines not enabled by default
- Might encounter few false positives
- PUP [Potentially Unwanted Programs] detection needs to improve

Avast Free Antivirus
The only antivirus with a fully customizable installer and selection of user preference components.
Platforms/Download: Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 11.1
Gizmos Freeware
Our Rating: 4.5/5 |
- Extremely light on the system with a modern and clean UI
- The only antivirus with a fully customizable installer, selection of user preference components
- Works best in hardened or lock-down mode, which blocks all unknown programs (medium-expert users only)
- Top notch detection capability, many secondary components to offer variety to a wholesome software
- Excellent malicious URL blocking, network protection, outdated software checking, integrated password manager, and comes with a rescue disk.
- Deep screen technology that includes Sandbox and Safe machine components for protection
- Bloated default setup, some ads and pop'ups
- Account creation for further protection after a month
- Lack of an anti-ransomware module, and Deepscreen disabled by default
- Cloud reputation, Malware signatures and HIPS module needs improvement
- Offers Google Chrome and various bloated secondary components during install [Choose custom install]
Read more...
- Extremely light on the system with a modern and clean UI
- The only antivirus with a fully customizable installer, selection of user preference components
- Works best in hardened or lock-down mode, which blocks all unknown programs (medium-expert users only)
- Top notch detection capability, many secondary components to offer variety to a wholesome software
- Excellent malicious URL blocking, network protection, outdated software checking, integrated password manager, and comes with a rescue disk.
- Deep screen technology that includes Sandbox and Safe machine components for protection
- Bloated default setup, some ads and pop'ups
- Account creation for further protection after a month
- Lack of an anti-ransomware module, and Deepscreen disabled by default
- Cloud reputation, Malware signatures and HIPS module needs improvement
- Offers Google Chrome and various bloated secondary components during install [Choose custom install]

Comodo Internet Security Premium
Provides a multi-layered protection scheme with HIPS, sandbox, antivirus and firewall.
Platforms/Download: [field_blackberry_download] | Linux | Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 8.2
Gizmos Freeware
Our Rating: 4.5/5 |
- Feature-rich with lots of options for customization along with setting tolerance against prompts
- Tweaked settings gives the best 0-day protection among the pack
- Multi-layered protection scheme with HIPS, Sandbox, Antivirus and Firewall
- Industry grade firewall with options for learning and behavioural blocker
- Low on resources with various graphical skins available and a clean user interface
- Painful for beginners to use it, not very newbie friendly
- Av-module is a bit weak especially the signature based detection
- Auto-sandboxing happens for various legitimate files, troubles with FPS games
- Too many tweaks needed for better protection
- Buggy software and updates are released slow.
- Chromodo browser, Yahoo search engine, custom DNS and Geek Buddy offered during default install. [Click customize installation during install]
Read more...
- Feature-rich with lots of options for customization along with setting tolerance against prompts
- Tweaked settings gives the best 0-day protection among the pack
- Multi-layered protection scheme with HIPS, Sandbox, Antivirus and Firewall
- Industry grade firewall with options for learning and behavioural blocker
- Low on resources with various graphical skins available and a clean user interface
- Painful for beginners to use it, not very newbie friendly
- Av-module is a bit weak especially the signature based detection
- Auto-sandboxing happens for various legitimate files, troubles with FPS games
- Too many tweaks needed for better protection
- Buggy software and updates are released slow.
- Chromodo browser, Yahoo search engine, custom DNS and Geek Buddy offered during default install. [Click customize installation during install]

Avira Free Antivirus
A free antivirus with high quality signatures, very fast updates and less false positives.
Platforms/Download: [field_blackberry_download] | iOS | Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 15.0
Gizmos Freeware
Our Rating: 4/5 |
- Pretty light on the system and runs smooth without system slow-downs
- Clean ad-free GUI, Ad-free installer, No pop-ups or ads
- High quality signatures, very fast updates, excellent detection on non-zero day threats
- Deep file scans with very less false positives
- Avira Protection Cloud makes for an excellent cloud engine
- Browser safety Add-ons available for major browsers
- Zero day protection (heuristic & behavioural shield) is very weak.
- Ineffective Browser launcher which is a memory hog (can be uninstalled)
- Painful removal for detected files. Repeated scans from Luke Filewalker increases CPU & RAM usage.
- Multiple file exceptions needs to be added (real-time and on-demand)
- No firewall/sandboxing/web shield technologies
Read more...
- Pretty light on the system and runs smooth without system slow-downs
- Clean ad-free GUI, Ad-free installer, No pop-ups or ads
- High quality signatures, very fast updates, excellent detection on non-zero day threats
- Deep file scans with very less false positives
- Avira Protection Cloud makes for an excellent cloud engine
- Browser safety Add-ons available for major browsers
- Zero day protection (heuristic & behavioural shield) is very weak.
- Ineffective Browser launcher which is a memory hog (can be uninstalled)
- Painful removal for detected files. Repeated scans from Luke Filewalker increases CPU & RAM usage.
- Multiple file exceptions needs to be added (real-time and on-demand)
- No firewall/sandboxing/web shield technologies

Panda Free Antivirus
Gives you antivirus protection with low memory and CPU usage, and collective intelligence cloud security.
Platforms/Download: Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 16.1.1
Gizmos Freeware
Our Rating: 4/5 |
- Low memory & CPU usage thanks to cloud protection
- Tiled UI with customizable interface and nicely rendered Settings interface
- Collective intelligence cloud security - Downloading virus definitions is history
- Good detection rates and behavioural analysis program
- Fairly good web protection and hardware resource handling
- Dependant on internet connection leading to weaker offline protection
- Slow scanning speed, no fingerprinting (successive re-testing same files) and at times issues with virus removal
- Not really light, performance impact in web browsing, installation and copying
- Certain false positives despite the information available at cloud
- Watch out for Panda security toolbar during install
Read more...
- Low memory & CPU usage thanks to cloud protection
- Tiled UI with customizable interface and nicely rendered Settings interface
- Collective intelligence cloud security - Downloading virus definitions is history
- Good detection rates and behavioural analysis program
- Fairly good web protection and hardware resource handling
- Dependant on internet connection leading to weaker offline protection
- Slow scanning speed, no fingerprinting (successive re-testing same files) and at times issues with virus removal
- Not really light, performance impact in web browsing, installation and copying
- Certain false positives despite the information available at cloud
- Watch out for Panda security toolbar during install
Honorable Mention
- AVG Free Antivirus (Most Improved products of 2016)
- Baidu Antivirus
- Bitdefender Antivirus Free
- Clearsight Antivirus
- Fortinet FortiClient
- Nano Antivirus
- Roboscan Internet Security Free
- Sophos Home Antivirus
- Windows Defender on Windows 10 (Most Improved products of 2016)
- ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall
Related Products and Links
How to make an antivirus engine
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Antivirus Engine
It is used for Real Time malware protection of files and is the core component to scan data on your PC for detecting and removing malware from hard disk, memory, boot sectors, network drives, removable disks, or from external network traffic (internet).
- How does an antivirus detect malware:
Firstly you got the signature-based detection which contains an offline database of known patterns of malware downloaded from the internet which can identify specific malware codes or family of malware. Then you have heuristic based detection that identifies pieces of code that are unlikely to be found in legitimate programs and hence is prone to false positives depending on the sensitivity of heuristics. Virtualization and sandboxing unpacks or executes unknown programs in an isolated secure environment so that their behaviour can be analysed and scanned using the antivirus engine. The latest one is cloud based detection that requires a reliable internet connection and sends the suspicious scanned file over the internet and the analysis is done by the vendors' machine running the cloud engine.
- Scanning for viruses:
Most antiviruses include these basic scan types: On-demand scan/manual scan is initiated by the user from right click context menu or from within the software. On-access scan is initiated when the resource is being accessed like running an executable, copying files from external drives etc. Scheduled scan periodically ensures that the system is free from malware by setting the time and frequency for scanning. Startup scan/quick scan checks most important locations like running processes, startup items, system memory and services, boot sectors and so on.
To be Continued in the next update....... Firewall, Proactive protection, Web protection components and more.
Editor
This software category is maintained by volunteer editor George.J. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here.
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Comments
How does Bitdefender free edition hold up to Avast/Avira?
It leads the security suites always? Why isn't tested yet?
PCMag.com's review of the new Avast! Free Antivirus version 8 came out today. The Editor Rating is three-and-a-half stars (by comparison, the previous Free Antivirus version 7 got four stars).
I'm a long-time Avast! user (since the old version 4.x days), and I think the new version 8 with its new features and better detection capabilities is their best yet.
Aloha all - I've been using AVast Free edition and generally I'm pleased with the product. I noticed however that with the update to latest version, the installer indicated that some personal information is collected by the Program and supposedly used only in aggregate form. Has this always been the case with this program, and also is that generally true of free antivirus products ?
Thanks. I'm sure most people would be more at ease if we knew exactly what info was being collected, but by the same token, in the absence of an available product that doesn't collect data, I suppose this is the lesser of two evils :)
Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has been updated to v4.2.223.1 (2013.02.27).
You're welcome!
Avast just updated to version 8. There a lot of new features, but the core security modules look unchanged. Cnet also stated that "Changes to existing Avast features include increasing the number of virus definition file updates per day, from 20 or so in the previous version to more than 70 per day in version 8."
Don't know how that works, because they were already steaming updates that they pushed out that updated definition frequently, but it put in perspective that AVG free and MSE which by default on check for updates every 24 hours.
I assume Panda cloud is constantly getting updates via the cloud whatever that means, and you can schedule Avira to update itself to whatever frequency to want through the built in task scheduler GUI.
AVG free GUI options prohibits anything other than at least once every 24 hours(you need the paid version to change it), and MSE has various methods and hacks to make it update itself more frequently but they are round about and not for average users.
So if definition update frequency is any indicator of security, (may help for example zero day vulnerabilities) then Avast free, Panda cloud, and Avira are the go to choice.
I believe it takes some importance. It isn't a coincidence that the paid versions of Avira and AVG check updates quite frequently. A practical and recent example is whenever there is a bulletin of a Java, Adobe reader or flash exploit in the wild. Most AVs will add definitions to defeat such exploits within 24 hours. Can't depend on heuristics in those situations b/c has been documented more than once where the collective AV scene fails to detect such exploits via heuristics. So it is urgent to get the definition to the users.
In this case, Avast would use it steaming update mechanism to update all its users ASAP to combat the exploit. However it problematic for AVG and MSE users depending on where they are in the 24 hour interval. If they are on the 23 hours, then they will get the update in an hour. If they are only on the 1st hours, then they will get it in 23 hours. Regardless, the user is vulnerable to that exploit just b/c of that arbitrary 24 limit, which was probably set in the first place to save bandwidth on its free edition users.
I also humbly disagree with the statement that all AVs are equal. MSE is a really basic definition based AV with a basic level of heuristics. In contrast, Avast goes step further by for example scanning browser scripts in real time that allows for blocking things like malicious iframes embedded in hacked legitimate websites, which is a big deal considering the average user is several time more likely to to get infected by hacked legitimate sites, then by purposely going into the gray intraweb.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47234697/
Or course the users will always remain the most important factor in cyber security, I am sure the maintainers of this site and the like minded readers this article attracts, probably on average have better a lot better security practices than the average pc users, meticulously updating their software, and switching to non admin accounts and other things that would in the grand scheme of things is a greater factor in preventing malware than any singular AV. However, it doesn't hurt to have better AV when given the choice.
In addition to its configurability, Avira Free A-V 2013 updates four times per day by default (previous versions updated once per day).
[Along with the software, the User Manual for Avira Free A-V 2013 may be downloaded at https://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus.]
For Avira Free Antivirus, try this link with optional offline installer
http://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus
Fred
Hi Wolfram
I did as you suggest but hit a problem that when I try to manually update from the fsbdev file Avira says that it cannot update as the license is no longer valid.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to get a valid license for this version as it is no longer supported?
Thanks
How to Kill Avira Nag Screen
For Windows 7 and Vista follow the steps below. For Windows XP, use Traverse folder / execute file instead of Read & execute below. The new version of Avira Free Antivirus requires you disable "Protect files and registry entries from manipulation" in order to disable to Avira popup nag screen.
1) Right click on Avira tray icon and select "Configure Avira Free Antivirus"
2) Enable "Expert Mode"
3) Go to General >Security>Product Protection and uncheck "Protect files and registry entries from manipulation"
4) Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avnotify.exe
5) Right-click avnotify.exe-> properties-> security->
6) Under the group or username SYSTEM click edit
7) Put a checkmark under the DENY column for “Read and execute”
8) Repeat steps 4 - 8 for avnotify.dll and ipmgui.exe
5) Re-check "Protect files and registry entries from manipulation" in General >Security>Product Protection.
Windows XP Pro
1) Right click on Avira tray icon and select "Configure Avira Free Antivirus"
2) Enable "Expert Mode"
3) Go to General >Security>Product Protection and uncheck "Protect files and registry entries from manipulation"
4) Start-> Control Panel
5) Administrative tools-> Local security policy
6) Click on Software Restriction Policy-> Action (at the top)-> create new restriction policies
7) Right-click additional rules (on the right side)-> new path rule
8) Click Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files\(Avira)\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\ and double-click avnotify.exe
9) Set the security level to Disallowed-> apply-> ok
You may wanna rethink the review you have for Avast! It is having more glitches varying on system. Take a look here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=115074.msg895558#msg895558
Plus many more bugs in other areas. You should never have overlooked this fact.
It is apparent that these developers are in to much of a hurry to do thorough bug checking before they release anything to the public. This is bad for public relations.
Look at all those bugs reported and increasing by the day on their forums for crying out loud!!!
Avira have released an updated installation package of their free A-V (v13.0.0.3185, a cumulative roll-up) and added an on-line installer option (2 MB; the full executable weighs-in at 104 MB). They, along with the updated User Manual, may be downloaded at https://www.avira.com/en/download/product/avira-free-antivirus .
Though a technical violation of the EULA, suppression of the update nag screen that many find annoying can be accomplished without too much difficulty; one such set of instructions may be found at http://www.ehow.com/how_7284896_remove-avira-nag-screen.html .
You're very welcome, JT!
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