Windows ships with a top-tier antivirus that costs nothing and gets out of the way. The honest answer for almost everyone is: turn it on and stop reading. The rest of this page is for the small number of people who have a specific reason to pay.
For when you suspect something on a machine but don’t want a second resident AV. All three are free, all three run on demand, none install a service that stays loaded after the scan.
Portable on‑demand scanner from Microsoft. Expires 10 days after download — pull a fresh copy each time.
learn.microsoft.comBrowser‑launched, downloads a small client, scans against ESET’s live signatures, then cleans up after itself.
eset.com/uk 03 KasperskyStandalone removal tool, no install. Useful as a second opinion when something has already got through.
kaspersky.co.ukThree brands worth your money: Microsoft’s own paid tier and the two independent vendors that have stayed both clean and class‑leading. Ascending by what you actually get for the price.
Same engine as the built‑in scanner, plus the cross‑device app for Mac, iOS and Android.
Slovak vendor, independent, light footprint, and the cleanest ownership story in this list.
Lightest impact, top protection, lowest false‑positive count of any paid product this round. Caveats below.
One paragraph per tier — what you get, what to watch for, when to actually pull the trigger.
Microsoft Defender is included with Windows. The consumer Defender app also offers cross-device apps for Mac, iPhone and Android; on Windows it’s the same scanner you already had — the value is a central place to see device status. Scores 99.93% online protection with only 3 false alarms in the March 2026 round — tied with ESET on protection, beats it on false positives.
Install the Defender app from Microsoft if you want the cross-device dashboard. There is no reason to pay separately for Defender — the built-in scanner gives identical protection on Windows. The one weak spot is system impact: 12.9 in the April 2026 performance test, which puts it in the “Advanced” band rather than “Advanced+”. On modern hardware you won’t notice; on an older laptop ESET or Kaspersky will feel snappier.
ESET has stayed an independent company through two decades of consolidation in this market — that’s the headline reason it’s here. On the raw numbers in the latest AV‑Comparatives rounds it sits at 99.93% online protection (tied with Defender), 4.2 system‑impact (Advanced+, second only to Kaspersky among paid products), and 16 false positives in the March run — the highest of the three picks here.
The Premium tier adds a password manager, file encryption, and online banking protection. The Essential tier (~£30) is just the scanner. The licence renews at full price — buy a new licence each year from a reseller instead of auto‑renewing.
In the latest AV‑Comparatives rounds Kaspersky is the strongest paid product on every axis that matters: 99.97% online protection, 3.5 system‑impact (lightest of any paid AV here), and just two false positives in the March 2026 run — the lowest of any vendor tested. The Plus tier adds a VPN and password manager.
Caveats: the US government banned the sale of Kaspersky products in 2024 over national‑security concerns, and the UK’s NCSC advises against it for organisations doing work likely to be of interest to the Russian state. For a home user in the UK with no such exposure it’s a legitimate technical choice and the engine is genuinely class‑leading. If that context bothers you at all, pick ESET instead and pay a small protection‑rate tax for the cleaner story.
Seven products, real numbers from the latest two AV‑Comparatives test rounds. Bars are scaled within the table; values shown are the actual measurements. The three Gen Digital rows are there so the “same engine” argument below has its receipt.
| T | Product | Engine | Protection | Impact (lower better) | False + | Price/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | MSWindows DefenderDefault |
Microsoft | 3 | £0 | ||
| 01 | ESETHOME Security PremiumClean |
ESET | 16 | £40 | ||
| 02 | KSPKaspersky PlusNumbers |
Kaspersky | 2 | £35 | ||
| 03 | GenAVG Internet Security |
Avast | 9 | £25 | ||
| 04 | GenAvast One |
Avast | 9 | £25 | ||
| 05 | GenNorton 360 |
Avast | 9 | £30 | ||
| 06 | MCMcAfee Total Protection |
McAfee | 14 | |||
| 07 | GDG DATA Total Security |
Bitdefender | 5 | |||
| 08 | BDBitdefender Total Security |
Bitdefender | 4 | |||
| 09 | FTFortect PC Suite |
Fortect | 10 | |||
| 10 | FSF-Secure Internet Security |
Avira | 19 | |||
| 11 | TATotalAV Premium |
Avira | 19 | |||
| 12 | VPVIPRE Advanced Security |
Bitdefender | 4 | |||
| 13 | TDTotal Defense Essential |
Bitdefender | 4 | |||
| 15 | QHQuick Heal Total Security |
Quick Heal | 16 | |||
| 16 | MBMalwarebytes Premium |
Malwarebytes | 23 | |||
| 17 | TMTrend Micro Internet Security |
Trend Micro | 8 | |||
| 18 | PDPanda Dome Advanced |
Panda | 54 | |||
| Protection = online protection rate (AV‑Comparatives Malware Protection Test, March 2026). Impact = AV‑Comparatives Performance Test, April 2026 (lower is less drag on the system). False + = false alarms in the March 2026 protection run. Bars are scaled within this table. Avast, AVG and Norton return identical protection and false‑positive counts — the same engine wearing three logos. Sources: Real-World Protection Feb–Mar 2026, Malware Protection Test Mar 2026, Performance Test Apr 2026. | ||||||
Four brands you’ve heard of, one parent company, mostly one engine. Why none of them are on the list above.
NortonLifeLock bought Avast (which already owned AVG) in 2022 and renamed itself Gen Digital. Avira had been bought by NortonLifeLock the year before. So Avast, AVG, Avira and Norton are all the same parent company, and Avast, AVG and Norton now ship on the same shared scanning engine. Differences between them are mostly branding, bundles and pricing.
You can see it directly in the table above: Avast, AVG and Norton all return the same 99.97% protection rate and the same 9 false alarms in the March 2026 test, with system‑impact scores within 0.2 points of each other. Three brands, one engine, three price points. Avira is still on a separate engine but is owned by the same group.
That consolidation is the reason none of them are on the recommendation list. Three of the four brands you remember as “good” from a decade ago are now one product wearing different colour schemes, sold through the same upsell funnel, with the same telemetry history — Avast was caught selling user browsing data through its Jumpshot subsidiary in 2020 and fined by the US FTC in 2024 over the same conduct. If you already have one installed and it’s not nagging you, fine — you’re not in danger. But on a clean install in 2026 there’s no version of “I want a paid AV” where one of the Gen Digital brands beats either ESET or Kaspersky on the metrics that matter.
The five factors that drive every pick on this page.