Today i will talk about some of the best AV solutions that are available for free for home and personal use. I have tried to put together a small list of good free AV solutions available. Just a note here, the order doesn’t indicate any ranking. Take a look at these and give them a try if you are not ready to buy a Antivirus solution.
This is something different. Panda Cloud Antivirus is the first free cloud-based antivirus thin-client consisting of a lightweight antivirus agent connected in real-time to PandaLabs’ Collective Intelligence servers to protect faster against the newest malware variants while barely impacting PC performance.
This one has performed great on my system when i was testing it few weeks back. Just check this out and perhaps you may even keep using it even though you intend to buy a paid AV solution.
Avast Antivirus is free for home and personal use. You need not pay anything to use it. It works quiet well on your system providing real time capabilties along with regular updates of virus definition. The interface can be quite confusing sometime and you can change its skins too ( Not seen in any other AV product). A good bet if you are not ready to buy a commercial or paid Antivirus solution for your system.
AVG provides both Free and Paid versions of its Antivirus solutions. Its the most popular Free Antivirus solution. The Paid version provides some additional functionality over the free one but both of them got real time scan capabilities. AVG can be a bit resource hungry on your system sometimes. Another good bet if you need a free AV for your system.
Just like AVG , Avira too have a free and paid version. It works well with less resources and it’s one of my favorites if you ask my choice in Free Anti Virus category. The reason being its good virus detection, a better interface and low on resources. This is my personal opinion and not based on extensive tests.
It is a cut down version of Bitdefender Anti Virus solution, the only problem with this version is that it doesn’t have real time scan capability and hence its not recommended to use to run on a fully working system. It can be used to clean already infected files but it can not prevent your system from being infected.
It is a open source GNU licensed anti virus solution but lacks real time scan capabilities. ClamWin Free Antivirus does not include an on-access real-time scanner. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware. Though it provides good detection capabilities along with integration to Windows explorer, this is not a full AV solution for any system
It is a combination of “Comodo AntiVirus + Comodo Firewall”. Many of you must have heard some good things about Comodo Firewall. It provides everything that you need to protect your computer from viruses and other malicious stuff. It includes real-time On Access scanning, Built in scheduler to schedule scans ,moving suspicious files in quarantine preventing infection, automatic updates of virus definitions and Simple to use.
It is the security solution provided by Microsoft for free for Windows operating system. Even though its not that good compared to paid solution, it is one of the good ones in Free Category. The detection rate is not bad but it may be heavy on resources sometimes.
Hope i was able to cover all the good ones. Tell me if i missed your favorite one in comments below.
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I’ve already tested all these antivirus and I think Avira is the best.
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All good choices. I personally agree 100% with Avira and have been using it for a long time now. I won’t recap what’s already been said about it except that once again, I agree. There are many more out there and some are on the rise or fall. I think of Antivirus applications as I would the stock market, my reason is simple, one year an AV could be awesome, the next, terrible and in the meantime, the little AV that could suddenly becomes top notch. I have been through a few AV’s over the 13 years of my PC repair and security and I constantly stay with what detects, what is fast to detect and uses little resources in doing so. I won’t get started about some paid for securities that are so hyped and bloated they should be their own operating systems, this is about freeware so aside from the ones Avinash posted, there are too many to post along with tools but a great place to look is here…
Link deleted by admin. (Admin Note – The llink doesnt produce all good results thats y deleted it.)
A list of a lot of free AV and AV tools.
Then I think it should be mentioned that not all are safe, why? Because, at one time I used to tear apart “or so it felt” rogue software and help post it on castle cops when it was around. I called it Rogueware at the time since there was no name for it specifically so I’ll call it that now. There are many sites you can look at for rogueware, be warned against so you don’t get suckered in…
http://antivirus.about.com/od/roguescanners/Scanners_to_Avoid.htm
and for a good list and removal instructions…
http://www.malwarebytes.org/forums/index.php?showforum=39&prune_day=100&sort_by=Z-A&sort_key=last_post&topicfilter=all&st=0
I do want to note, I use Malwarebytes Anti Malware which “in the above link is the HOME OF” will find a lot of things other AVs don’t. I use it side by side with AV and never had an issue since XP till Win 7 now.
Here is the download link for free version of MBAM
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
It won’t do active protection in the free version but a scan every so often manually does a world of good.
@ Pchammer. Thank you for your elaborate comment. Malware bytes is a anti-malware or spyware tool which performs great but its not a AV tool. It can be used as a complementary tool with AV.
Yep, you are correct and why I stated ** I use it side by side with AV ** ;) Although, as most would agree, it’s a confusing mess due to the fact that many people think anti malware is just another anti spyware protection, it’s not. Malware can be any malicious code or intent to harm your pc or personal info, Viruses, Trojans, etc… are all included in malware and a good anti malware will detect and remove a good portion of them. As a lot of people would say, keeping the anti malware and anti virus separate bodes well for companies, 2 products to be sold or used instead of one. I don’t know if I agree, perhaps to some extent but I feel it’s the way they work, not what they look for that separates the two. That said, some are already merging the two and sure, if the engine can run both directions, then why not? But back to point and just to finish explaining, MBAM and others will definitely compliment your AV but not replace it by any meansand I apologize if it came across as such. ;)
You need not apologize for anything here mate. This place is for sharing views from everyone and you are free to express it here to the extent of not hurting anyone.
Hi,
Yes….all are very good choices .
Talking about anti-malware tools a good option is a-squared Anti-Malware .
Perhaps a new article with free anti-malware ?
Best regards !
Thanx mate for the idea. I may soon come out with a similar article. Thanx
hi ,
i can say that avast professional is worth the price , rather small when you take it for three years , …. and you can save now 25 percent
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_professional.html
the scanner as a simple and extended interface , the options and customization are better then any other product ! been using it on vista , seven and windows home server without any problems what so ever , and it saved often more than a few comps
MSE is an other great product , it can be combined with avast now without any problems
dont install ten different programs , you might cancel out each other and be left with open doors , dslreports.com has a great firewall tester
have a nice day and happy new year for all
of all the free antivirus favourite is avast , installation is as smooth as ever, small signature updates ,automatica signature updates and inform about updates,virus detection is good,works wonderful with my favourite firewall OA Pro,also it tries to covert all aspect of security in free version.
MSE is good for broad band connection as it uses cloud computing in additon to asignature updates. also its detection rates is good and it is from microsoft so integration with windows is excellent and it is resource exhaustive so if you have good enough ram then you can use it.
Bit defender free is on demand scanner, can be used with avira , but it installs some more addtional services at start up so it weighs yours system down , so if you are security prone then you can use it in additon to any on access scanner.
I don’t like avira especially after its version 9 it becomes more agreessive and it has updates scares earlier though I have read from forums that it coreected it of late but certainly I have not tested it , I am more than justify using avast as it is for veryday use and it is good.
Thanks a lot mate for your feedback. If i have reviewed them one by one then i would have gone into finer details. But good to see you guys giving some great feedback regarding these free AV tools.
Avast is defnitely a good choice, however, Avira has not become more aggressive on my 4 home computers, if you could explain that a bit it would be appreciated. I haven’t noticed any out of the ordinary behavior with Avira at all. The only other aggressive behavior it could have now is due to using Heuristics which will give anything an aggressive profile on a PC.I don’t “personally” enable the Heuristics due to this. As far as the update issue, which one? Being that I’ve followed many securities over the years, trust me when I say, they have all had numerous scary moments. That said, I do know Avira has fixed their update methods for a few reasons, not to mention the extreme amount of traffic just to send updates, which was likely the biggest issue. I am not defending Avira or slamming Avast, I like them both, but just personally would ask you clarify these issues if you wouldn’t mind, because I like to catch the latest about software I’m using and if I missed something somewhere, I would like to know. Thanks!
i am happy with my Avira free, Cloud is also superb.
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Reading back, I certainly don’t want to turn this into a “My anti virus is better than yours” argument, seen that too much and not my intent just to be clear. The fact is, all AV have their good and bad points, there is no “perfect” AV or solution and it’s simply a good thing we have a choice on what we feel is good or not.
As stated before, all of them have their good and bad years with the exception of some that never seem to climb the ladder and if you want protection that is doing a good job, read tests, read reviews however, be cautious, some forums etc… will have false information, “What? You mean the internet has false information??” < no need to answer that one, even some reviews by "supposed" worthy sources are out to help sell certain AV products and will give them false markings, or simply, the highest bidder gets the highest rating and they are all about selling a product. Once again, without trying to create an argument, you will see Norton "Symantic" listed as top on most of these with a hundred ways to purchase it. However, here is a link to a well known testing site that many tend to go by… the comparative tests are in PDF format so open with a PDF reader like Adobe or whatever.
http://av-comparatives.org/
You are right mate. Any AV product cant be 100% perfect and most of us know that. Even the best AV product on your system doesnt guarantee that your system wont be infected. No one has got 100% detection rate and everyone of them does produce false positives.
hi ,
since some mentioned , some more info ,
the Microsoft Malware removal tool is not bad at all , can be downloaded from this link http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.aspx , life hacker has a great article http://lifehacker.com/5227896/five-best-malware-removal-tools , enjoy .
what many forget is that security starts with a good modem router , and isp , many of them provide protection at a low fee for your mail , sometimes true a proxy while serving , ….
have a nice day
Nice list of software, thanks Avinash!
I wanted to support the comments saying AV products don’t hit 100% detection and removal rate. I know the post is on free anti virus products but just to say, through research and testing, the best we’ve seen was hitting a little over 98% by one of the big boys and this is a paid product we’re talking about so if a huge market leader with a budget can’t reach 100%, don’t expect it from free software. If you don’t have any type of antivirus though, man, use the list from Avinash and get some type of scan going at the least.
Very true, thank you for bringing that up and that reminds me, I would like to add that I have heard many people say they won’t use a free anti virus because it can’t be as good as the paid for, or they ask me how it can possibly be as good. Well, many of the free “versions” ARE the paid for, same engine and detection, they just don’t have some of the bells and whistles that the full versions have but they will protect you just as well for what they do protect. Some say they do this so everyone has protection, and I’m sure they do, although many do this for the marketing but a small price to pay for free security and it helps them and us. So people should not be afraid that something is FREE, it doesn’t always mean worse and as you stated even the big dogs can’t do the 100%.
also try Forti Client Internet Security, its free !! : http://www.forticlient.com
Good list.
I have used Bit defender,Avast and Avira anti virus programs and the most compatible anti virus is Bit defender.It works perfect and protects your pc completely form viruses.Ne ways i will look around for more details.
I agree, I also have BitDefender and I think it is the best there is when it comes to removing trojans:)
Most of you here is forgetting the fact that we are talking about free AV solution not the paid one. Bitdefender free doesn’t provide a real time scan features making it almost useless on running system. You people are talking about Bitdefender paid edition which is good. But in FREE category, many others surpass it easily as they do provide a real time scan feature to protect your system from viruses in real time.
It’s true, though Bitdefender online scanner is really good, as well as bitdefender quickscan- if you know these free programs.
goed overzich van goede gratis antivirus software. dank je.
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