Recommended Anti-Virus
Table of Contents
This article provides a list of recommended anti-virus products for home and business use, as ranked by SimeonOnSecurity. The rankings are based on professional opinion and testing against malicious samples, and only cover anti-virus capabilities, detection, user experience, and performance. Windows users can choose from both paid and free options, while Linux and MacOS users have limited options, with paid options only available for Linux. Note that AV is not required on Linux or MacOS and using any VPN or password manager provided with the AV suite is not recommended. The article also provides recommendations for VPN providers. Business use recommendations are currently being worked on.
Rankings are based on SimeonOnSecurity’s professional opinion and basic testing against malicious samples provided by VirusTotal. These recommendations do not take into account vendors privacy policies or related practices and only cover the AV capabilities, detection, user experience, and performance.
Notes:
- Generally speaking, AV is not required on Linux or MacOS.
- It is not recommended to use any VPN or password manager thay may be provided with the AV suite.
- Please see our recommendations for VPN providers here.
Ordered Top-Down, Best to Worst, by category.
Home Use:
Windows:
Paid:
Free:
- Bitdefender - Antivirus Free Edition
- Avira - Free Antivirus for Windows
- Avast - Free Antivirus
- Microsoft - Windows Defender
- Recommended: SimeonOnSecurity - Windows Defender Hardening
Linux:
Paid:
Free:
MacOS:
Paid:
Free:
Business Use:
Placeholder: Work being completed.