Battle Bitdefender Free vs. Avast Free vs AVG Free vs Panda Free

[ifacedown]

Hello!

I have tried AVAST Free before (before acquiring AVG), AVG Free(before being bought by AVAST) and Panda Free. I was never infected because I am a careful user.
Now I am using Bitdefender Free and found it to be strong in protection and light. However, it becomes suddenly heavy and stalls my old netbook when it finds malware to clean. Also, even if I turn off its shield, its AVC will still take action - this irritates me so much (Sometimes even if exclusions have been set.)
What free antivirus could you advise which is light and effective, even those not included in the list? thanks.
Running Windows 10, Creators Update

 

[JakeXPMan]

I read in some articles before that in many AV today, the two that respect most your privacy are:

Emsisoft and Avast.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I read Panda and Avira had most user respect in their privacy policy (yrs 2010-15) I haven't checked recently though.

 

[ifacedown]

Right now I am using:

AVAST Internet Security 2017.

I got a license which will expire on April 2028 - 11 years of free use! Though I did not install many features, but only opt for Ransomware protection, Real Sites, Sandbox, and Firewall.

 

[Sephiroth Source]

In my opinion Panda is lighter and Bitdefender is the most effective. My choice is Avast which is good in both cases. Qihoo360 and Kaspersky are also good, but Avast is more complete. Here I am using CF with the Cruel Sister settings and the ZAM with Pandora active.

 

[Faybert]

Of all the free, I prefer Kaspersky Free.

 

[ifacedown]

Of all the free, I prefer Kaspersky Free.

Kaspersky Free lacks behavior blocker

 

[spaceoctopus]

In free products, Avast is the best choice. No other free antiviruses offer more protection and customizations than Avast.

 

[bribon77]

Avast free

 

[Pat MacKnife]

Kaspersky Free lacks behavior blocker

Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.
Now i'm using BD free but i think maybe i will switch to KFA once it is available in my native language. (already tested the english version and its realy good)

 

[L S]

Avast - ofc.
....... and + if you want Malwarebytes Antimalware.

 

[insanity]

Bitdefender Free: it's cut down version, having basically the signatures of BD paid. It has very few customisation options. It is more lightweight, but sometimes a bit buggy, like an unfinished project.
Avast Free: multiple layers of protection, including a behaviour blocker and several options available to tweak. It's my option on the free side.
AVG: almost as good as Avast. But it comes bloated with cleaning tools and more naggings.
Panda Free: never used, but the results on the reviews out there shows poor protection.

 

[Arequire]

Bitdefender free + bitdefender trafficlight

Bitdefender Free already includes the same malicious website blocking that TrafficLight offers.

I read in some articles before that in many AV today, the two that respect most your privacy are:

Emsisoft and Avast.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Avast collects anonymized browsing and search history which is sold to third parties (advertisers) to make money from their free offering.
They also collect an extensive amount of machine & personal information for all their products.

Kaspersky and all other av use poor scanning engines.

Kaspersky Free uses the same signature engine as its paid-for offerings.

 

[ifacedown]

In free products, Avast is the best choice. No other free antiviruses offer more protection and customizations than Avast.

Yes, correct... but maybe 360 Total Security will be a competition for Avast, for it has many features (some are bloat) and customizations. But 360 will not be able to compete toe-to-toe with Avast I think.

 

[ifacedown]

Avast collects anonymized browsing and search history which is sold to third parties (advertisers) to make money from their free offering.
They also collect an extensive amount of machine & personal information for all their products.

Well, thanks for the update.

 

[Evjl's Rain]

Yes, correct... but maybe 360 Total Security will be a competition for Avast, for it has many features (some are bloat) and customizations. But 360 will not be able to compete toe-to-toe with Avast I think.

Qihoo360 has delayed signatures for avira and epsecially BD + its cloud engine is really poor. I'm talking about the detection rate against new malwares. With all 3 engines enabled, the detection rate is nowhere near the other competitors
moreover, the behavior blocker is also really poor which makes 360 infected almost everytime it was tested in malwarehub. It's only good against ransomwares due to its HIPS. This is my observation with my own testing
qihoo is never my option to use alone as an AV. It must be combined with other products like anti-exe or SRP, sandbox

Avast has hardened mode and other other customizable features. hardened mode + disable powershell, java and windows script host, it would be really difficult to bypass it. I have seen only 1 benign malware that bypassed it

 

[ifacedown]

Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.

Yeah, you have a point KSN is really a powerful network. The only downside is if I use my netbook offline which is rarely the case.

My only problem with Kaspersky Free is sometimes my Windows 10 Creators Update fails to boot (hybrid shutdown/hibernate) that I have to restart it by force. This never happens in BitDefender Free.

Bitdefender Free: it's cut down version, having basically the signatures of BD paid. It has very few customisation options. It is more lightweight, but sometimes a bit buggy, like an unfinished project.

My problems with Bitdefender Free:
1. Notifications about resolved malware take too long to show up - sometimes after a minute that the malware has been removed.
2. Even if I turn off its Protection Shield, the AVC still works, sometimes even the exclusions have been set. This is really annoying.

 

[monkeylove]

In my case, I tried 360 with all engines on and it slowed down my PC (which I noted when I accessed folders using Windows Explorer). The same happened to Panda.

For Avast, AVG, and even Avira, I did not detect a slowdown, but popup ads appeared which I could not disable.

For Bitdefender, I experienced difficulty installing it because I had an older version installed. Also, updates fail once in a while, etc.

 

[ifacedown]

For Bitdefender, I experienced difficulty installing it because I had an older version installed. Also, updates fail once in a while, etc.

Bitdefender Free is almost perfect for its simplicity and power. However, they should make setting up exclusions better..

 

[ForgottenSeer 55474]

I voted Bitdefender, but in general, I think you should pay for your AV, Kaspersky is also very good

 

[insanity]

Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.

That's true if you're not the unlucky person who gets infected first and if you don't go offline frequently. But KFA also does the opposite: they collect intelligence from the free users in order to apply it for their paid customers (as implied by Eugene); free users are in a way their guinea pigs and that's a risk, IMO.

 

[ifacedown]

I voted Bitdefender, but in general, I think you should pay for your AV, Kaspersky is also very good

Thank you!

For now I am using AVAST Internet Security which will expire on April 2028 - 11 years of use

But, I am thinking of throwing it away because of GUI glitches - often the main screen goes blank, have to wait for some seconds before buttons/texts show up!