Pros and cons of free antivirus for Mac.

Free antivirus software is very popular - some packages simply offer enough protection for the average user without having to part with any of your hard-earned cash. However, what defines an average user? The short answer is that we can’t define an average user and always believe safety should always come first. So, is a free antivirus for your Mac sufficient or should you contemplate upgrading to a paid version?

There are a lot of drawbacks with free AV software from display ads and pop-ups to limited features and reduced performance, so why would anyone choose to put up with this? The main drawback to upgrading is of course, cost. Some people don’t spend enough time on their PC to justify spending money on software that they can get for free.

Free software packages often lack additional features that can prevent viruses, such as advanced financial protection, spam filters, firewalls and browser protection. Not only that they can become obtrusive on your system with reminders/pop-ups of upgrading to a paid version.

Free anti-virus software equates significant cost savings, which is appealing to cost-conscious costumers. Avast and AVG offer free acceptable protection at no cost at all.

The choice between free and paid anti-virus software comes down to the user’s activities.  If you tend to use your computer to play offline games like solitaire, to create documents and have limited internet access then a free anti-virus will probably suffice. On the other hand, if you are a heavy online user that accesses internet banking and social media sites everyday, a free version will not cut it.

We believe malware detection scores from independent test institutes such as; av-test, virus bulletin, and av-comparatives are important when selecting your virus protection. We have collated some scores for you, however we don't display by test scores alone, many factors are used.

Independent Test Labs

Virus BullitinAV ComparativesAV Test
The Top 10 AntiVirus

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So you can choose your perfect antivirus use our filters to choose the features you require. As default we list antivirus providers by top affiliated. You can change how we sort this list using the sort by filer and select; Most Popular, Top Featured or Lowest Price. Most popular uses total number of unique clicks sent to each antivirus over the last 7 days. Top Featured positions are chosen by the webmaster, we receive advertising revenue from some antivirus providers and this impacts the order which the webmaster chooses. Lowest price lets you list by lowest price first. We do not include every plan from each antivirus we use the price for the plan which we link to and this may not be the lowest price available.