bitdefender antivirus free edition worth it

In February-March 2020, they each scored 99.7% with five false positives, the same as Windows Defender. Microsoft told us that the high false-positive counts were a result of its Smart Screen feature flagging anything unknown as potential malware, and AV-Comparatives chalking up a false positive every time that happened.įor its February-March 2020 tests, AV-Comparatives reportedly turned Smart Screen off, and Defender came away with only five false positives and an overall detection store of 99.7%.Īvast and AVG had the opposite problem: only five false positives each but underwhelming 99.2% average detection rates in the February-May round, and 99.3% with eight false positives each in July-October. In Febuary-March 2020, the results swung back Kaspersky's way it got a perfect 100% while Bitdefender got only 99.5%, but neither had any false positives.Īmong the other three brands, Microsoft's malware engine may have been a bit too aggressive, as its Windows Defender had a decent 99.6% detection rate but a whopping 74 false positives in the earlier round, and 99.3% in the second round with 58 false positives. The positions were reversed in the July-October 2019 round, in which Bitdefender got 99.7% and Kaspersky 99.1%, although the false-positive scores remained the same. Kaspersky was indeed perfect, with a 100% detection average and zero false positives. In Austrian lab AV-Comparatives' February-May 2019 series of tests, Bitdefender's defenses were nearly perfect, stopping an average of 99.9% of online malware and racking up just two false positives. Microsoft had 39 and Avast and AVG 26 each, while Kaspersky had only three, indicating a well-tuned detection engine. However, Bitdefender registered the most false positives - 47 - among all five malware engines over those two-plus years. They missed some zero-day malware 15 times since January 2017, and some widespread malware 10 times. Windows Defender was in the middle of the pack, consistently detecting either 100% or 99.9% of known malware, but missing the mark with zero-day malware seven times over 28 months.īringing up the rear were Avast and AVG, which use the same malware engine. Only Kaspersky did better, detecting both types of malware all the time until it finally stumbled in April 2020 with a 99.0% detection rate of zero-day malware.

Over all 24 of German lab AV-Test's monthly evaluations in 20, and in the first four tests of 2020, Bitdefender detected 100% of known 'widespread' malware in every time, but missed some previously unseen 'zero-day' malware three times. In recent evaluations conducted by independent malware-testing labs, Bitdefender did very well, although it showed a tendency to make false warnings. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition: Antivirus performance

Bitdefender antivirus free edition worth it