Best antivirus software 2025: These 8 apps keep your PC safe

Who should buy Norton 360 Deluxe?

Norton 360 Deluxe works for everyone—it consolidates all the biggest protections you need online into one affordable package, including parental controls. If you have trouble keeping up with security experts’ recommendations (or haven’t yet gotten around to following all of them), this suite centralizes and simplifies it all. That’s how it won out as our pick for the best antivirus software of 2025.

This plan has just about everything most PC users need, without extra bloat. For antivirus performance, Norton offers strong online protection, while having minimal impact on system resources if you don’t often download or copy large amounts of files. Additionally, you get malicious link and attachment screening, dark web and privacy monitoring, and webcam safeguards. Norton also tosses in 50GB of storage for cloud backups, access to Norton’s password manager and VPN, parental controls, and PC utilities that include the ability to monitor for outdated software. And those major extras—the password manager, VPN, and parental controls—have easy, simple interfaces, without feeling stripped to the bone.

Norton 360 Deluxe: Further Considerations

As part of its efforts to consolidate online security protections into a single software interface, Norton sports a refreshed user interface. It also began promising better scam protection at the beginning of the year, in addition to its other features. And despite all this value, its pricing remains very reasonable. For the first year, you’ll pay $50 for five devices, and then $120 per year thereafter.

Who should buy Avast One?

For those seeking utter ease of use, Avast One not only offers solid protection, but a simple, friendly interface. Combine that together with useful extra features and multi-device coverage, and you have a winning combo.

In addition to top-ranked antivirus protection, it offers safeguards against remote webcam takeovers, malicious websites, and trackers. The Avast One plan also includes dark web monitoring, a VPN with unlimited bandwidth, and protections for saved passwords to a browser. You get utilities to help you keep your PC’s drivers up to date, clean up your PC, and optimize your apps, too.

These features may sound standard, and to be fair, many of them can be found in rival software. But Avast makes staying on top of security dead simple, whether you’re a novice or a security veteran. Its default settings require little input to keep your PC protected, and if you want to dig in further or tinker, you still have that option, too.

Avast One: Further Considerations

Unlike Norton 360 Deluxe (our top pick), Avast One does not come with a password manager, nor parental controls. Yet despite having fewer features, Avast One costs more. You’ll pay $84 for 5 devices (or $120 for up to 30 devices) during the first year. The subscription fee rises to $180 and $300, respectively, per year afterward.

Who should buy AVG Internet Security?

AVG is best known for its excellent free antivirus software, but there’s good reason to upgrade. AVG Internet Security not only offers more comprehensive protection, but also easy management of those tools. That user-friendly interface is valuable if you find keeping up with online threats too overwhelming or time consuming.

The Internet Security plan builds upon the free version’s top-ranked protection against malware and web, email, and network threats. It also guards the passwords saved to your browsers; webcam takeovers; unknown access to files with sensitive data; malicious redirects for websites you’re trying to visit (aka DNS hijacking); and Windows Remote Desktop attacks. Dark web monitoring is included as well. And the app has minimal impact on system resources when monitoring your system in the background, though full scans can hit budget or older systems harder.

AVG Internet Security: Further Considerations

AVG Internet Security costs just $60 during the first year for 10 devices, with the fee rising to $100 thereafter. The price is fair, especially given the deeper control and more expansive protection compared to the free version. But without elements like parental controls, VPN, and a password manager, it doesn’t provide the same value as Norton 360 Deluxe.

Who should buy Avira Prime?

Avira Prime is one of the best choices for those seeking more help with managing their PC, thanks to its simple, clear interface and feature lineup. In addition to to solid antivirus protection, it offers a password manager, unlimited VPN, and a boatload of PC utilities that (among other things) can keep apps up to date, securely delete files, and back up data.

Thise security suite will best suit users seeking a simple antivirus suite, broad online protections, and robust PC utilities—and also want to use those latter tools for more confident management of their computer. Not every utility is a winner, but the overall set can help you identify and understand the more technical aspects of Windows and system upkeep.

Avira Prime: Further Considerations

The one major feature missing from Avira Prime is a set of parental controls. You can’t use it to filter web content or monitor device usage. The app also can hit older and budget PCs hard when full scans are running, if you’ve added or changed large amounts of files. But typically, it only minimally affects system performance when left to run in the background, so most people won’t notice Avira running.

For the first year, you’ll pay $60 for the first year, and then $105 for every year after. That first-year cost is slightly higher than our overall top pick, but if you prefer more newbie-friendly software, it’s worth the extra ten bucks.

Who should buy McAfee Total Protection?

Your personal information can be used against you online—and with data breaches so painfully common these days, it can be a relief to have help in tracking who has your info. For anyone who doesn’t have as much time to handle that work themselves, or even keep track of a separate service, McAfee Total Protection can serve as a central spot for managing all your online security concerns.

Total Protection hunts down current threats to PCs, with solid results. These days, dangers extend beyond just malware to identity and privacy issues, and this app addresses these just as much as it does ransomware and phishing sites.

That ID protection makes it stand out against competitors, especially if you pay to scale up the service. The plan we tested included dark web scanning for multiple pieces of personal information (email address, phone number, social security number, passport, driver’s license, date of birth, tax ID, credit card, usernames, and more). The app also offers to help change your password for online accounts, when applicable. VPN access is included as well.

McAfee Total Protection: Further Considerations

Mid-tier and budget machines can see impact on system resources when running McAfee scans. When we ran a full scan during a variety of common tasks (web browsing, document editing, etc), we noticed some dips in performance. You can mitigate this effect by timing scans for off hours, however.

Currently, McAfee Total Protection is available through third-party sellers (McAfee has turned its attention to its slightly newer McAfee+ plans on its website). We like this version still because of how extremely affordable it is—for example, a license on PCWorld’s own software site is just $19 per year, which covers up to ten devices for one year.

Who should buy Panda Dome Complete?

All deluxe antivirus suites offer extra tools as part of their package, but Panda Dome Complete particularly stands out. It also has one of the most striking interfaces we’ve seen, while still putting everything right at your fingertips. Similar to Microsoft’s Bing homepage, Panda Dome features a beautiful background photo, with the interface elements placed on top of it.

A whole raft of utilities come with this suite, including a virtual keyboard, advanced virus removal, an update manager for your Windows apps, a disk defragmenter, hard drive cleaner, and startup apps manager. You also get Wi-Fi protection (which lets you see what devices are connected to your network), a password manager, parental controls, and a VPN that offers 150 megabytes of bandwidth per day.

In addition to offering reliable antivirus protection, Panda had the most minimal impact on system performance during our benchmarks. So minor, in fact, that in the real-world it worked out to no difference.

Panda Dome Complete: Further Considerations

As one of the most feature-rich offerings, Panda Dome Complete is among the more expensive options. You can purchase a subscription for $54 during the first year ($90 per year afterward), but that’s covers just one device. Fortunately, it only costs a little more to upgrade to a three device plan ($55 for the first year, $100 per year afterward) or five device plan ($54 for the first year, $110 per year afterward).

Who should choose Windows Security?

Windows’ built-in security suite is an excellent free antivirus option—as we discovered in our roundup of the best free antivirus—even if its protection isn’t quite as strong as third-party rivals when your PC is offline. It bundles together Defender, which monitors for viruses and malware; Firewall, which blocks malicious incoming traffic and suspicious outgoing traffic; ransomware protections (including controlled access to folders, as well as data recovery via OneDrive integration); app restrictions; and even basic parental controls.

The most important of these protections are automatically enabled in Windows—you don’t have to lift a finger to get real-time antivirus scanning or network protection. You will have to manually switch on some features, though, including ransomware folder controls and file recovery. You can also find more features in other antivirus suites, like online privacy tools, a VPN, and encrypted cloud backups. But this free protection comes preinstalled on Windows machines and does a good job of keeping you protected from most threats.

Windows Security: Further Considerations

To coax the most out of Windows Security, you will have to configure it. (You can learn more in our video on How to use Windows Security.) You’ll also need to separately choose and manage additional security services for optimum online protection—e.g., privacy tools, VPN, password manager, and encrypted cloud backup.

Who should buy Intego X9?

The focus of this roundup is the best antivirus for Windows PCs, but many PC enthusiasts are the de facto IT for friends and family. If you want to help an associate or loved one achieve strong antivirus protection for an Apple machine, our colleagues at Macworld recommend Intego’s Mac Internet Security X9.

In the suite are two utilities: The better known one is VirusBarrier, which spots and eliminates malware threats, and gets strong ratings for its protective abilities. It comes paired with NetBarrier, a two-way firewall that watches for suspicious traffic going to or from your Mac. For the price of this suite, NetBarrier’s inclusion isn’t common, but definitely welcome.

As part of its protection, VirusBarrier X9 scans for threats on your Mac’s internal storage drive (including any downloaded email and compressed archives), as well as connected disks and iOS devices. The app quarantines suspicious files, which you can then mark as trusted, leave in quarantine, or try to have repaired.

And in a nice touch, Intego VirusBarrier looks like a real Mac program, too—making it an ideal match for anyone looking for an effective app that blends in seamlessly.

Intego X9: Further Considerations

As reviewed, Intego X9 costs just $25 (or £20.00) for the first year using this special Macworld link. If you need additional tools, like a backup utility, speed optimizer for your Mac, or parental controls, you can upgrade to the Mac Premium Bundle X9 for $40 for the first year (£23.99).