Best Free Antivirus

Why pay for antivirus software when you can get the best antivirus for free?

Virus protection is serious business these days. All it takes is one password stealing virus to compromise your bank accounts and other financial accounts and leave you open for identity theft. That is why you need the best antivirus software for your computer. The good news is that the best antivirus software is free for home use and as good as any antivirus you can buy.

Why do these companies give away the best antivirus free? They all have pro versions with more features that they would like you to buy.

All three programs offer Windows versions. Avast is the only one of the three products that has a version for Macs.

1. Avast Home Edition Free Antivirus

I have to crown Avast as the overall best free antivirus for, among other reasons, having excellent virus and spyware detection rates according to antivirus test results from AV-Test.org.

Avast antivirus manages to provide a simple and functional user interface, while also being very customizable and feature complete. The active protection feature monitors seven different ways that a virus could enter your computer, including Web browsing, email, file sharing, and more.

Avast also features scanning on boot up if you choose to do so. That's something you don't want to do on every boot as it takes quite a while. However, if you suspect you have been exposed to a virus or spyware it is the best way to detect and remove active infections.

2. Avira Personal Free Antivirus

Avira is another one of the best free antivirus products, but it is not as full featured as Avast. The free version of Avira doesn't claim to protect against spyware, but I believe there is some crossover between what is defined as a virus and as spyware. If you want to make sure you are covered for spyware you can use something like SuperAntiSpywarewhich also has a free version.

Avira has an attractive interface, but it needed more tweaking to get things to function the way I wanted than did Avast. According to AV-Test.org Avira rates slightly higher than Avast for virus detection. However, if the spyware tests were run on the free version of Avira the score would be very low since they reserve the antispyware feature for the paid version.

3. AVG Antivirus Free Edition

AVG is the most popular and one of the best free antivirus software products. AVG has a very polished user interface and is easy and comfortable to use. AVG detects both viruses and spyware in the free edition. However, in the test mentioned above the detection rate is a little lower than Avast or Avira.

The main thing that puts AVG last in my choices for best free antivirus is the amount of functionality left out of the free version verses the the paid version of the software. You still get good basic protection, but Avast and Avari cover more of the infection pathways than does AVG.

All three of these best free antivirus choices can be easily installed and uninstalled. You can feel free to try all of them to choose your favorite.