There are hundreds of antivirus programs on the market and all claim to offer the best protection at the best price. However, I’ve tested the top antivirus software on the market, and only a few of them are knowledgeable enough, safe enough, and effective enough to make it one of the best antiviruses of 2023. Today, most antivirus products not only offer an anti-virus engine they also include additional features that provide extra protection, such as a network firewall, anti-phishing, virtual private network (VPN) , password manager , parental controls , and dedicated security options available for mobile devices.

However, many anti-virus products do not exactly work as promised they have poor detection capabilities when it comes to malware, they do not reliably block malicious websites, and the extra functions are poorly designed and practically useless (even if they charge extra for them). So, how do we know which antivirus software product offers the best security, the best malware protection, and the best value for money? I compared the top antivirus programs on the market and ranked them based on security, functionality, speed and value for money.
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Norton 360
A Norton 360 its protection is unbeatable against viruses and malware. We’re talking about a well-built and well-maintained Internet security software package that fully ensures that all your data is safe and protected from theft and works well with all operating systems. This product is the best choice for home users who are looking for a complete, intuitive solution with the best possible cybersecurity protection features, all for an inexpensive annual subscription.
Norton’s antivirus software uses a unique antivirus engine that uses heuristics-based analysis and machine learning. Thanks to this, the program is able to detect, find and remove even the latest and most serious malicious code so it produced a 100% protection rate in all my independent tests, and always performed better in detecting and removing threats than pre-integrated anti-viruses (e.g. compared to Windows Defender). My favorite extra is the dark web monitoring tool (by far the best such dark web tool I’ve ever tested). The software constantly scans the dark web for a wide variety of personal information, including bank card details, insurance documents, home addresses, phone numbers, game avatar names and other data. In fact, the program immediately alerts you if any stolen data is detected.
Bitdefender Total Security
A Bitdefender has a highly advanced antivirus engine the company uses a huge malware database, while taking advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence, in order to make the program work more efficiently in detecting and countering malicious code than almost any other competing product on the market protection. In my tests, Bitdefender found and removed every single malicious threat on my computer. Moreover, since the search engine works on a cloud basis, all searches are run in the Bitdefender cloud on the company’s server, so it puts less strain on our computer’s system. Bitdefender had virtually minimal system load on both my Windows and Mac laptops, even during intensive full system scans.
Like Norton and Bitdefender, it also includes advanced settings for users who know they can customize their virus protection to suit their needs. We can configure custom virus scan settings on your computer for different tasks such as checking scripts, network shares, boot sectors and even new/modified files. Bitdefender is even more known for having one of the most functional and customizable anti-malware search engines thanks to its advanced configuration options.
McAfee Total Protection
A McAfee Total Protection it has almost every internet security feature a reader could ever need such as malware and phishing protection, a password management menu, VPN, and identity theft monitoring and insurance. Moreover, the design of the functions is intuitive, simple to use and reliable.
Thanks to its excellent anti-virus functionality, Total Protection is already considered a great software product the program boasted a perfect 100% detection rate when running my test series, where it found all malicious code samples. McAfee detects, blocks, and removes both simple and advanced threats, including viruses, trojans, spyware, keyloggers, and rootkits.
McAfee’s anti-phishing protection is excellent and has prevented me from loading known phishing or malicious sites. The program identified the vast majority of dangerous sites, far surpassing browsers, e.g. knowledge of the integrated protection functions offered by Chrome and Firefox, as well as the web protection packages included with most competing antiviruses.
TotalAV
TotalAV includes an excellent antivirus, some really cool extras, all within a very intuitive dashboard making it a particularly good choice for novice users who don’t want to bother with complicated menus and settings. However, TotalAV also provides plenty of customization options that advanced users will enjoy. TotalAV’s antivirus engine is fast, reliable, and boasts a near-perfect detection rate when it comes to malware. The search engine found 99% of malicious code in my tests, from viruses and trojans to ransomware. It just missed a few tricky files (which Norton and Bitdefender successfully detected).
We also get a full range of extra internet security features. I especially liked the performance optimization option that TotalAV offers this feature freed up more space on my computer than most competing software in my tests. I also liked TotalAV’s VPN it’s secure, works with popular streaming sites, and provides pretty fast speeds on all servers.
Intego
The Integothe best macOS antivirus on the market. Most antivirus brands focus exclusively on protecting Windows PCs even competitors like Norton and Bitdefender offer far fewer features in their macOS programs than in their Windows versions but Intego has designed all of its Mac antivirus packages exclusively to to provide quality Internet security and optimization tools for macOS taking full advantage of Apple’s built-in security features, including:
- Real-time protection against malicious code.
- Mac system optimization and system cleaning tools.
- Advanced Mac backup options.
- Network security functionality.
- Parental control tools.
Intego’s antivirus engine produced perfect detection rates and found malicious code (both macOS and PC malware) in my tests . And the searches run quickly — the software reviewed more than 800,000 files in 2 hours. I also really liked that subsequent scans only take a few minutes afterwards, thanks to Intego’s file caching solution that ignores files that have already been scanned