Readers' Choice 2023: The Antivirus and Security Software You Trust Most

A computer virus can hit anyone. No one is immune to social-engineering tricks. Even the wariest of us can be fooled into clicking a link or attachment with potentially devastating results. The good news: Effective malware protection can help keep you safe online.

For this month’s PCMag Readers’ Choice survey, we asked you to rate the security tools you use to protect your home computers and mobile devices in terms of overall satisfaction and your likelihood to recommend the brand of software. In addition, we asked you to rate satisfaction with several additional aspects of these tools, such as cost, ease of use, and perceived trustworthiness of the brand.

We all need to take steps to keep our PCs—and by extension, ourselves—safe. Read on to see which brands of security software PCMag readers recommend.

Security Suites for Home 2023

A lot of companies offer to keep your computer safe. Nine of these brands, including numerous familiar names, received the requisite minimum number of survey responses to be included in our analysis of security suites. And three—Bitdefender, Malwarebytes, and Webroot—earn ratings of 9.0 or higher for overall satisfaction and 8.9 or higher for likelihood to recommend. These are all fantastic scores on our key measures of user gratification. (All products are rated on a scale from 0 for extremely dissatisfied to 10 for extremely satisfied.) Of these three companies, Bitdefender earns our Readers’ Choice Award. The company receives overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend ratings of 9.1 each, the highest of the bunch.

Bitdefender shared the Readers’ Choice Award with Webroot in 2021, but last year, Webroot came out on top alone for security suites at home. This year, the companies trade places. Webroot continues to be held in high regard by our survey respondents, but Bitdefender has the edge. In addition to its top marks for overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend, Bitdefender earns the highest rating for satisfaction with tech support (8.8) and trustworthiness (9.3), as well as for satisfaction with several of the specific security tools that suites include to protect users: firewall protection (9.3), spam filter (9.0), ransomware protection (9.3), phishing protection (9.2), and VPN (8.8).

Webroot earns the highest ratings in a few measures as well: satisfaction with setup (9.3), ease of use (9.1), and cost (8.6). Malwarebytes ties Webroot in top marks for ease of use and setup, and Malwarebytes bests all the competition in satisfaction with reliability (9.5), PC performance (9.4), and antivirus and malware protection (9.4).

In general, if one of these three top companies doesn’t have the highest rating, it typically comes in a close second. There are some exceptions, though: Microsoft earns the second-best rating for satisfaction with ease of use (9.0) and setup (9.2), and Kaspersky finishes just behind Malwarebytes in satisfaction with reliability, with an excellent rating of 9.4.

Kaspersky’s overall satisfaction rating goes down half a point from 9.1 in 2022 to 8.6 this year, and its likelihood to recommend rating drops nearly a full point, from 9.2 to 8.3. Kaspersky is headquartered in Moscow, and one survey respondent said that he “would not deal with a Russian company again.” (Also, PCMag no longer recommends Kaspersky products.) Still, it’s unclear why respondents are generally rating Kaspersky lower than they did last year.

Norton is the most popular security suite among readers based on the number of responses, but it also has the lowest satisfaction ratings on nearly every measure. The company does receive a rating of 9.0 for antivirus and malware protection, but users’ overall satisfaction is just 8.2, and its rating for likelihood to recommend is barely better, at 8.3.

Antivirus for Home 2023

Some PCMag readers choose a standalone antivirus/anti-malware tool instead of a suite that provides a wider variety of protections. This may be because they feel such protection is adequate, or because they prefer to construct their own best-of-breed protection with products from a variety of companies. Regardless of the reason, if you’re looking for a standalone tool, seek out Malwarebytes. It again takes our Readers’ Choice Award, as it has every year since 2020.

All of Malwarebytes’ ratings improve from last year’s award-winning showing, except for satisfaction with cost, which drops slightly from 8.7 to 8.6. Every other satisfaction measure is rated 9.0 or better, except trustworthiness (8.9).

Only two other standalone antivirus tools, Avast and Microsoft, are popular enough with our readers to be rated. Microsoft’s overall satisfaction rating of 8.6 is the same as last year's, and its likelihood-to-recommend rating improves slightly, from 8.3 to 8.4. Though respondents may be a bit reserved with praise, they rate several aspects of Microsoft’s tools quite highly, including satisfaction with setup (9.4), ease of use (9.2), reliability (9.1), and PC performance (9.1).

All of Avast’s ratings are lower this year than in 2022; several fall below 8.0. Overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend were both rated 8.2 last year, but for 2023, they earn 7.5 and 7.6, respectively. Avast’s lowest rating is for trustworthiness, which falls from an already unremarkable 8.1 last year to 7.4 this year. (We ask respondents to rate trustworthiness because of reader feedback in the past that questioned whether security software companies are always acting in their customers’ best interests.)

Mobile Security Apps 2023

It bears repeating: Smartphones and tablets are computers. As such, they’re susceptible to phishing and other attacks; social engineering can victimize people regardless of the platform. You should seriously consider adding protection to your devices, as many of our readers have already done.

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Android is a more open platform than Apple's iOS and iPadOS, which means there are more ways to attack an Android device, and conversely, more ways to protect it. Therefore, Android security tools tend to offer many more features than those for Apple's mobile devices. A key feature on both platforms is that the tools watch your web traffic and attempt to prevent you from reaching malicious sites.

This year, Bitdefender wins our Readers’ Choice Award for both its Android and Apple security tools.

Bitdefender’s Android protection also won the award in 2022. Like last year, the company earns the highest satisfaction ratings on every measure for which it receives enough responses. Its overall satisfaction rating of 9.0 is half a point higher than that of its closest competitors, Malwarebytes and Norton. On most other measures, though, the competition is much closer. For instance, Bitdefender’s top ratings for likelihood to recommend (9.0), satisfaction with ease of use (9.1), and device performance (9.2) are each only a tenth of a point ahead of Malwarebytes, and Bitdefender’s satisfaction-with-cost rating (8.8) just edges out AVG (8.7).

Bitdefender also takes the top spot for iOS and iPadOS protection this year. Its ratings are all better than those of last year’s winner, McAfee, which didn’t receive enough survey responses to include this year. Second place goes to Norton, which is right on Bitdefender’s heels. In fact, the companies either tie on each rating or are separated by only 0.1 point. Bitdefender comes out ahead in overall satisfaction (8.5 to Norton's 8.4), satisfaction with cost (8.2 to 8.1), and trustworthiness (8.6 to 8.5).

The companies tie for likelihood to recommend (8.3) as well as satisfaction with ease of use (8.7), and Norton ekes out a win on satisfaction with device performance (8.7 to 8.6). While Bitdefender wins our award, either product appears to be a very good choice for protecting Apple devices.

Full Results

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for Antivirus and Security Software was in the field from November 28 to December 19, 2022. For more information on how our surveys are conducted, read the survey methodology.