Battle Comodo Free AV vs Panda Free AV

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Comodo Free Antivirus
Panda Free Antivirus

oldschool

Level 81
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Mar 29, 2018
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I'm bored so I'm looking at AV protection options and wondering what MT folk have to say about these two highly rated products. Please note especially any issues you've had installing/uninstalling either of these products.

Edit: Also, please include any feedback about privacy policies. :D
 
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Shadowra

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Sep 2, 2021
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Hello :)

Difficult a little to choose but I will do my best.

Comodo:

- Very configurable, multiple options
- Sandbox
- Web protection that improves
- Very solid defense

On the other hand the Antivirus scanner is for me rather average

Panda :

- Autonomous
- Very average detection
- Cloud quite responsive (W32.Exploit.Gen / Trj/CI.A detection)

On the other hand, Web filtering is not as good as the active pro defenses.

So I choose Comodo !
 

pxxb1

Level 9
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Jan 17, 2018
436
Panda leaves a lot behind, drivers among others. Even if you use their own dedicated uninstaller. Good Av according to tests but not much of hips/bb according to users.

Comodos Av lacks tests but is average according to test of CS but becomes very good with the sandbox in use. Therefore, like a blind man it stops and promts almost everything suspicious to be on the safe side. A little bit heavier then Panda when i used/tested them, long time ago. At that time web protection could be inactivated.
 

Farhad24

Level 1
Mar 24, 2021
24
Protection wise Comodo is the best hands down especially that you don't care that much about web protection. Yes their database is also weak but who cares with Comodo, it catches everything untill you want it to not.

I have not tested Panda at all. but i can imagine that it is not better than Kaspersky/Bitdefender in Protection field? and Comodo is just on another level even in comparison with those big players it just the well if not the "perfection" it's probably the best protection you could ever get and i think you already know that yourself anyone here knows that, we just have different reasons for not installing it yet.

Mine is "Melih", when the head of a cybersecurity company default thought is that it's product is "perfection" well it means they don't care that much about fixing their product OR adding extra features OR listen to their users. when you think something is perfect. everyone else who says something is wrong with it are haters.
and of course last time ( a year ago ) i've checked their customer service it was a nightmare. support agent on Chat literally response to your message every 5-10 minutes, i've seen some people wait +20 minutes for a signle goddamn response in Comodo' Chat Support. but that might be not the case for you since you want their free product.

Privacy wise well they are not much into this and they don't use it for marketing ( no wonder about Comodo tho, those guys don't believe in marketing it's just you who are missing their perfection any minute. ) You see privacy is just another factor of marketing nowadays IMO.
 
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Anthony Qian

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Apr 17, 2021
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Both are worse than Windows built-in antivirus, generally.

Panda's detection rate is way too low, and it is heavily dependent on Internet connection. At the same time, Panda has a high FP rate, according to AV-C. To be honest, I don't know how Panda manages to have such a low detection rate while having such a high FP rate.

Comodo is overall better than Panda, thanks to its Sandboxing, Firewall and HIPS. But computer newbies should avoid using Comodo, because it constantly prompts you to choose whether or not to allow a program to run or connect to the internet. Also, Comodo has a fairly low detection rate. It depends heavily on its sandboxing technology, which is not ideal IMO.
 

Kongo

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Feb 25, 2017
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Both are worse than Windows built-in antivirus, generally.

Panda's detection rate is way too low, and it is heavily dependent on Internet connection. At the same time, Panda has a high FP rate, according to AV-C. To be honest, I don't know how Panda manages to have such a low detection rate while having such a high FP rate.

Comodo is overall better than Panda, thanks to its Sandboxing, Firewall and HIPS. But computer newbies should avoid using Comodo, because it constantly prompts you to choose whether or not to allow a program to run or connect to the internet. Also, Comodo has a fairly low detection rate. It depends heavily on its sandboxing technology, which is not ideal IMO.
Wouldn't say that Comodo is worse than Microsoft Defender, as it has a completely different approach.
 

roger_m

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Dec 4, 2014
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Panda is one of the lightest antiviruses there is. But in terms of protection, while it scores well in testing by AV labs, it's terrible. Its signatures are not good at detecting new threats and as already noted, its behaviour blocking is terrible. I was using Panda for some time and despite installing lots of software during that time, I never got a single alert from its behavioural protection. While I never ran anything malicious, you would think that - at least occasionally, I would have got an alert. Although it scores badly for false positives when tested, my experience was that I received very few, despite regularly downloading installers that had only recently been released.

Another issue with Panda, is that for the most part, you need to manually download and install new versions. I have seen only one case where it was able to find and install a product update.

I have little experience with using Comodo as an antivirus. The last time I tested it, I found it to be very buggy. Also, when I upload installers to VirusTotal, Comodo gives plenty of false positives. I was running Comodo for some time with only its firewall enabled and had no issues that I can recall when using it like that.
 

Bombus

Level 2
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Jun 12, 2016
50
Comodo has very bad antiphishing and bad sites protection. So so detection by signatures. But Comodo (especially Cruelsister settings) is king of all free and paid antimalware solutions. Thanks to Auto sandoxing technology. Panda is havier on RAM. Better signatures and protection against malware sites. Still, Comodo rulezzz:)
My settings: Comodo internet security (Cruelsister settings + full signatures), Sandboxie, ublock origin and copies of all my files in 2 USB.
 

Nagisa

Level 7
Verified
Jul 19, 2018
341
Common Sense™ 2021 has %100 protection against the kind of malwares you will need an Antivirus for. Besides your system is going to be more vulnerable against exploits, with all those high-privileged 3rd party services running on. So I would choose neither of them. Or, the one that's lightest on the system.

 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,630
I agree with most things said by users above. Comodo has its strong points. It's preferable to use Comodo in Cruel Sisters settings. It's very light and mostly problem free that way. Whitelisting blocked apps isn't too hard either. But I had a couple of situations where a couple of apps were crashing for no apparent reason even though they were unblocked.
I had to manually create an allowed application firewall rule for them to work. This was a weird behavior because according to Comodo's logs, the app wasn't being blocked. Anyway, Comodo with Cruel sister's settings is very strong, but it's not a typical AV. With Comodo I even feel comfortable setting UAC turned off like the way she uses it on her PC. I don't recommend it but just saying.

Panda on the other hand is very light and my experience is similar to @roger_m. Even though AV tests shows that it has a lot of false positives in my experience I never had one as far as I can remember. I had more false positives with MD, BD, Emsi, F-Secure, Avast, Trend etc.
But protection wise, it isn't up to the mark. Like Comdo I can only recommend it to the expert power users who knows how to stay safe, who can differentiate good apps from the bad ones. For them, Panda free is a good choice. It is light, compatible with literally everything and don't even cause issues in any Windows Dev builds. You can also set it to ask mode so that it doesn't automatically quarantine a threat without your permission.
I also last month installed Panda Free on a 2 GB ram Windows 7 system, and it runs flawlessly.

Even I myself am looking for something free and light because Microsoft Defender slows down some things for me. Eg: An online game I play takes 15-20 seconds longer to open with MS Defender than it's with Comodo, Panda and ESET. It should be mentioned that Fast startup is turned off on my PC and MD removes its cache after shutting down or restarting the system every time.
 

cruelsister

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Apr 13, 2013
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what MT folk have to say about these two highly rated products
1). Regarding Comodo I would suggest staying with C. firewall. The strength of Comodo rests primarily with Containment and certainly not the AV module (which is fair at best, therefore unacceptable); even so, CF does still have a AV Cloud function as well as File rating and just does not have the on-demand scanning module which in my opinion is pointless.

2). After seeing your post about Panda I just took it for a quick dance and found the results to be sub-optimal. Although fine against older common malware it did not fair so well against a few worms and LoLbin's. Also a MyLittlePony encryptor (which my cat freshly coded) trashed personal files.
 

Moonhorse

Level 37
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May 29, 2018
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Even I myself am looking for something free and light because Microsoft Defender slows down some things for me. Eg: An online game I play takes 15-20 seconds longer to open with MS Defender than it's with Comodo, Panda and ESET. It should be mentioned that Fast startup is turned off on my PC and MD removes its cache after shutting down or restarting the system every time.
Wich game? Im currently running comodo firewall on cs settings + microsoft defender on default + edge with emsisoft extension

Yeah would like to have something lighter than MD, but most avs set https scanning of their own, and i want to have adguards only..i used qihoo in the past, but in daily stuff i do i did not see much difference
 
F

ForgottenSeer 67480

Panda is a good choice if you want really small RAM usage, but not recommended for surfing or real-time protection. COMODO has to offer more better protection, but may be a bit difficult to configure if you want to keep your PC clean from coming infections.
 

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