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.
Apple Antivirus For Mac
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.
Some folks love an antivirus that packs in so many security features it might be called a suite, while others prefer a tool that just focuses on the antivirus task at hand. If you belong to the latter group, the no-frills protection you get from F-Secure is just the thing.
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.
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.
The researchers at AV-Test Institute(Opens in a new window) evaluate Mac antivirus products on three criteria: protection, performance, and usability. A product can earn up to six points for each. Protection against malware protection is essential, of course, as is a low impact on performance. A high usability score reflects a small number of false positives, legitimate programs and websites identified as dangerous. In the latest report, six products achieved a perfect 18 points, all six points for all three criteria.
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.
We launch each URL simultaneously in four browsers. One is Safari or Chrome on the Mac, protected by the Mac antivirus that's under test. The other three use the protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Discarding any that don't fit the phishing profile, and any that don't load correctly in all four browsers, we report the product's detection rate as well as the difference between its detection rate and that of the other three test systems.
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.
Many of the products covered in this roundup earned certification from at least one independent testing lab; some managed two certifications. There really are no bad choices here, as far as basic antivirus protection goes. Even so, a few products stand out.
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac not only achieved lab certification, but it also earned the maximum score in every test. Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac is a full security suite, also has certification from one lab, and its features include a no-limits VPN. These two are our Editors' Choice winners for Mac antivirus protection.
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.
The password manager and the email-attachment screener have disappeared, however, and the tech support is limited to online documents. If you need more support, you'll want to upgrade to Bitdefender or Norton. Still, if you want a solid, dependable Mac antivirus program for nothing, this is the one to get.
Intego has been making Mac antivirus software since 1997, and its Mac Security X9 offers very fast scans, thorough malware detection and a full-fledged firewall. The program also supports legacy macOS versions going all the way back to 2013's Mavericks.
Intego Mac Security X9 is a solid piece of software that does its job well, even if its user interface is a bit bare-bones. You can even toss in effective Windows antivirus protection for a small extra fee.
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. 2ff7e9595c
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