How we review the best antivirus programs

Buying the best antivirus software for your needs is important.

Therefore, we want to be 100% transparent about how we test and review and which methods we used to select the best anti-virus programs for 2024.

We use 5 different factors to create an overall score and decide on which antivirus software makes it into our top 10 list. All of these 5 factors play a role, but not all are equally important.

Therefore, the weight on the end result varies according to the factors we tested.

Here are the 5 main factors, and their relative weight in our testing process:

1. Virus protection: Most important, with a weight of 40%, is the quality of virus protection.

2. Performance: How the antivirus software affects your computer’s resources is also vital. We gave this factor a weight of 20% in our overall score.

3. Additional features and device compatibility: This includes features like VPNs, password managers, PC clean up, family safety and more. We gave this factor a weight of 20% in our overall score.

4. Value for money: Mostly, as with everything in life, you get what you pay for. Most antivirus software is priced similarly so we gave this factor a weight of 10%.

5. User reviews: While important, these can often be misleading as we all handle and understand technology differently. We gave this a weight of 10% on our overall score.

We took the information about virus protection and performance from AV-Test und AV-Comparatives – the two leading international test laboratories for antivirus software.

To decide on a score for additional features, device compatibility and value for money we analysed the offers of all the different antivirus software providers that we tested. This information is best taken directly from the source.

The information for user reviews come from TrustPilot, the Google Play Store and our own user reviews.