So how do you know which antivirus products offer the best security, the best malware protection, and the best value? I compared the top antiviruses on the market and ranked them on security, functionality, speed, and price.
Best Antivirus For Mac Including Wifi With Tests
Starting at $19.95 / year, Trend Micro offers several plans to choose from. Trend Micro Antivirus + Security protects 1 Windows device with malware protection, advanced ransomware protection, and a secure browser for online finances. Trend Micro Internet Security protects up to 3 devices (PC only) and adds device optimization tools, social networking protection, and parental controls. Trend Micro Maximum Security protects up to 5 devices (including Windows, Android, Mac, iOS, and Chromebook) and adds a password manager.
The best paid antiviruses, on the other hand, include all of these features, plus many other extras (like password managers, parental controls, and system optimization tools). Premium antiviruses like Norton also include multi-device coverage across all major operating systems so you can protect all of the devices in your household.
As with Windows antivirus tools, the most common price is just under $40 per year for a single license. ProtectWorks is unusual in that a single $29.95 payment lets you protect all the Macs in your household, with no subscription needed. McAfee goes beyond that, with a $59.99 per year subscription that protects all your Macs, PCs, Android, and iOS devices. With Sophos Home Premium, $60 per year lets you install and remotely manage protection on 10 Macs or PCs. At the high end, you pay $99.99 per year for a three-license subscription to Intego Mac Internet Security X9 or Airo Antivirus for Mac.
When macOS Mojave came out, it advanced security in various ways, including tracker blocking in Safari, a password manager, and a tighter rein on AppleScript. MacOS Catalina piled on more security features, with enhanced control over data-access permissions, weak password warnings, a strengthened anti-malware gatekeeper, and more. Big Sur goes further, sealing the operating system in a protected volume that's unreachable by malware. And Monterey adds subtle security enhancements like hiding your IP address in Safari and Mail and easier access to passwords. Still, nothing we've seen suggests that upgrading to Monterey will obviate the need for an antivirus utility.
Independent antivirus labs put macOS antivirus products to the test, reporting scores that let us know which ones are the most effective. Both AV-Test and AV-Comparatives give Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac a perfect score, and it earned very good scores in my hands-on tests. In the default Autopilot mode, it does its work while keeping user interaction to a minimum.
Kaspersky Standard for Mac is a full macOS security suite, going for a price that just gets you plain antivirus protection from many competitors. Among its many features are a hardened browser for financial transactions and active Do Not Track for online ads. Despite these virtues, we've had to remove it from our list of best Mac antivirus tools.
After consideration, we can no longer recommend that you purchase Kaspersky security products. We've left the reviews in place, with a warning, since they provide useful information. You'll find Kaspersky's features mentioned in several places below, for comparison purposes. But at least for now, we're removing Kaspersky products from our "best of" lists.
When you go to select a new washer, refrigerator, or other appliance, chances are good you research it first. User reviews can be helpful, if you discard the very best and very worst of them. But actual test results published by an independent lab give you more reliable information. Two large labs include macOS antivirus products in their testing, but the slate of products for testing is variable. When we first rounded up Mac antivirus products, we only selected those with at least one certification, but at present, many of them don't appear in either lab's test results.
Results in macOS-specific tests have a much smaller point spread than in tests of Windows antivirus utilities. It's good that many products in the chart received at least one certification for Mac protection, and even better that some received two certifications. Avira is the only product that currently boasts top scores from both labs.
The scourge of ransomware is on the rise. While ransomware attacks are more common on Windows devices, Macs have suffered as well. Of course, any antivirus utility should handle ransomware just as it handles spyware, Trojans, viruses, and other malware types. But since the consequences of missing a ransomware attack are so great, some security products add components with the sole purpose of preventing ransomware attacks.
Many antivirus tools on Windows boast a ton of bonus features, packing in everything from tune-up utilities to VPNs. That behavior seems less common on the macOS side, though Norton now includes a VPN with no bandwidth limits. Even so, some vendors don't have a standalone Mac antivirus, opting instead to offer a full security suite as the baseline level of protection, and a few others include suite-like bonus features in the basic antivirus.
There's another angle to the variation in Mac antivirus pricing. How about paying nothing at all? Avast One Essential for Mac, AVG AntiVirus for Mac, and Avira Free Antivirus for Mac are totally free for personal use. The best commercial products offer more protection, but if you can't afford the best, at least install a free antivirus.
However, these aren't the only choices. Look over our reviews, pick the product that suits you best, and get your Mac protected. Once you've done that, you should also consider installing a Mac VPN. While an antivirus protects you, your devices, and your data locally, a VPN extends that protection to your online activities, protecting both your security and your privacy.
1. Bitdefender has the best antivirus for Macs (opens in new tab)Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac combines great malware protection with a barely noticeable system-performance impact.
2. Norton has the best feature set (opens in new tab)Norton 360 Standard includes a password manager, unlimited VPN data, a firewall and Dark Web monitoring, features you don't often see with Mac antivirus software.
3. Avast offers the best free Mac antivirus (opens in new tab)Avast Security for Mac may cost nothing, but it doesn't cut corners. Its malware protection is top-notch, its system impact is minimal and it has dialed back the annoying ads upselling you to a paid version.
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac has an easy-to-use interface, affordable pricing, nearly flawless malware detection and a very light system-performance impact. For those reasons, it's once again our Editor's Choice for best Mac antivirus software.
Unusually for a Mac antivirus program, Bitdefender can roll back ransomware encryption, including on Time Machine backups. It also offers extensions to harden your web browser and blocks online trackers to protect your privacy. The Autopilot and Bitdefender Shield features keep the software running without much human intervention.
The only downsides are the absence of the password manager that comes with the Windows version of Bitdefender Antivirus, and that the Bitdefender VPN service is limited to 200MB per day unless you pay more. On both our tests and those from A/V testing labs, Bitdefender wasn't as strong as Norton and Avast, but the different was marginal. Other than that, it's a nearly perfect Mac antivirus program.
However, the best extra features are just teases. The password manager holds only 15 items. The parental controls are limited to a single child device without location tracking. The VPN service gives you only 300MB of data per day.
However, we feel that Intego's relatively high price doesn't quite match its sparse feature set. While other paid Mac antivirus programs, such as Bitdefender and Avast might toss in browser extensions, a password manager or even a VPN to justify the purchase, Intego's extra features aren't too different from what you'd get with free Mac antivirus software. However, the company does offer the ability to scan iPhones and iPads connected via USB for malware - something that no other Mac antivirus maker provides.
During our tests, we found its background system impact more noticeable than its competitors', although nowhere near the system impact of some Windows antivirus products. We also found it had a relatively small impact during active scans.
Furthermore, we don't know really how well McAfee Antivirus Plus protects against Mac malware. There haven't been any recent Mac malware-detection testing scores for McAfee, so its protection powers are impossible to compare with those of the best Mac antivirus software.
Do you have young children or teenagers at home? Consider Mac antivirus software that comes with parental controls or web-content filters, like Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac or Sophos Home Premium.
In order to determine which of the programs above is the best Mac antivirus software, we evaluated each of them based on ease of use, interface and performance impact. We installed each program on the same 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro running macOS 11 Big Sur powered by a 2.9-GHz Intel Core i5 processor and had 8GB of RAM and 42GB of data stored on a 256GB SSD.
To gauge how effective each program was at stopping malware, we used the results of comprehensive testing conducted by AV-Test (a well-regarded independent product-testing lab in Germany) and AV-Comparatives (a similarly well-respected testing company in Austria). We use test results from both labs for the best Android antivirus apps too.
Right now, our answer to that question is Bitdefender for Mac (also available as part of the firm's all-singing all-dancing Bitdefender Total Security plan). It combines faultless virus protection (as verified by independent test labs) with a whole host of features and a Mac antivirus client that's ridiculously easy to set up and use. 2ff7e9595c
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