Under the truism, "Better a free antivirus than no antivirus," more and more users are now turning to antivirus solutions that don't cost a cent.
Still, let's be clear: In our tests and those of international laboratories, no free antivirus suite could match the performance excellence of the best paid suites on the market today (BitDefender, Kaspersky, Norton, GData, Eset, Trend Micro, and so on). This isn't because they're less capable at detecting malware. In this respect, many free suites have an even playing field. What sets the free options from paid is that the former tend to lack some of the defenses and features that publishers reserve for paid versions of the same software. This can include real-time defenses, intelligent anti-phishing filters, anti-spyware browser, security systems authentication and more.
