The best free antiviruses for Windows 10

We did not dare to touch upon the question of which antivirus program can best protect a computer with the Windows 10 operating system installed for quite some time. The fact is that in such things the subjective factor is very strong, but I want to give users information that is as objective and reasonable as possible. At the moment, there are a great many articles on the Russian-language Internet about the best free antiviruses. Most of them, at first glance, look quite high quality: they are accompanied by descriptions of these software products, listing their pros and cons, nice pictures, and convenient download links. However, upon closer examination and thoughtful reading of these materials, it turns out that their authors in their antivirus ratings do not rely on any sources at all.

Numerous articles with the headings " Top 5 best free antiviruses" or " The best antivirus program for Windows 10” are based solely on the opinions of the authors of these materials. Let us repeat that, as a rule, no serious sources are cited.

Meanwhile, choosing an antivirus program for Windows 10 (even if it’s free) is not a matter of choosing wallpaper or paint, which can largely be purchased based only on their appearance, your own emotions and inner feelings. An antivirus is a complex software product, and choosing it based on its appearance or recommendations from unknown authors is quite strange. That is why for quite a long time there was no article on our website about the best free antivirus software. But now it has appeared.

The reason for writing this material was serious research, conducted jointly by the Russian non-profit organization " Roskachestvo"(established by the Government of the Russian Federation and financed from the state budget) and ICRT – International Consumer Research and Testing Ltd(International Association of Consumer Tests). For several months, computer security experts tested 23 pre-selected and most popular anti-virus programs in Russia from 18 laboratories. Each product was tested according to 200 indicators. As a result, a kind of security software rating for Windows 10. Note that even the leader of this list - the paid Bitdefender Internet Security - scored only 4.59 points out of a possible 5.5. This fact indicates the seriousness of the study., its scientific character and authority. It turns out that even the best antivirus today, according to Roskachestvo experts, only corresponds 83.45% to some abstract ideal. We find such a critical approach to even the best products more convincing than all sorts of laudatory articles found on the Internet about individual antivirus programs.

Ratings for all tested antiviruses, both paid and free, can be seen in the image below. All of them are presented in descending order: from best to worst.

Since our material is devoted specifically to free antivirus programs, for the article we took from the research results only what concerns free versions security software.

The best free antivirus for the top ten

Among all the free (and even most paid) antivirus programs, the one that stands out in terms of system protection is Bitdefender Free. Roskachestvo experts rated only the paid version of Bitdefender Internet Security better than it. It turns out that two products from the same company took the top two places in the ranking of all the best antiviruses. At the same time, the difference in the evaluation of a free and paid product is small: The free version received 4.37 points, and the commercial version - 4.59 out of 5.5 possible.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (this is the official name of this free antivirus) is a product of a famous Romanian laboratory. The company's developments are used in more than 150 countries around the world. Its products were especially loved by residents of France and Germany. The Bitdefender antivirus engine ranks first in the world in terms of the number of licenses sold. Many other security software products use it to detect threats. For example, the Bitdefender engine is enabled by default in the famous Chinese antivirus program 360 Total Security. It is also used in products from Ashampoo, Bullguard, F-Secure, Iobit and many others.

As a free antivirus, Bitdefenfer offers the previous version of its paid product every year. It includes: a constant real-time anti-virus monitor and anti-spyware protection. In addition, for the largest browsers there is free app TrafficLight from Bitdefender, protecting the user from web threats. note that it is downloaded separately for each browser(the download link will be given below) and is not installed automatically with the antivirus!

Disadvantages of Bitdefender Free It is worth noting the lack of Russian language in the settings. However, this program in the free version is so compact in terms of settings that you can figure it out even without knowing English. A more significant disadvantage is the rather high impact of the program on computer performance. In terms of performance, it took only 18th place among the 23 antiviruses studied. Therefore, you should not use Bitdefender Free on a weak computer that is 8-10 years old. For such cases, it is better to choose the most fast antivirus.

In some cases, there may be a problem downloading Bitdefender Free. The link to the program download page on the official website looks like this: https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html . However, when trying to access this page, you may be redirected to https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions. This is done so that, firstly, it is more difficult for users to find a free version of the product, and secondly, to attract attention to the paid versions of the antivirus. If you encounter such a redirect to a page for paid products, then you need to follow the first link (with free.html at the end) again and again until the necessary page for downloading the free antivirus finally opens. As of October 2018, it looked like this:

On the page, click the green “FREE DOWNLOAD” button, first save, and then run the program to install. The installation steps are not difficult and are shown below in the form of pictures. In step 3, do not forget to check the box for accepting the license agreement and privacy policy (the box below, from the box about sending anonymous statistics, you can, on the contrary, remove), and then click “INSTALL”.

In order for Bitdefender Free to work and start protecting your Windows 10, you need to create an account:

1. To do this, launch the program (by finding it in the Start menu or by clicking on the icon on the right side of the Taskbar) and click the “SIGN IN TO BITDEFENDER” button.
2. After that, enter your name in Latin, then your email and password. It is not necessary to confirm your email, so you can enter all this data as you wish.
3. Then check the box.
4. And click "CREATE ACCOUNT".
5. After a few seconds, the protection will be activated.

Now, to ensure greater security against web threats, you must remember to install the application TrafficLight for browsers on a computer. Depending on the Internet browser, it can be downloaded from the official Bitdefender website at this link for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. The Chrome version will also work in Opera and Yandex Browser.

Top 5 free antiviruses for Windows 10 by level of protection

So, the best free antivirus product - Bitdefender Free, according to Roskachestvo experts, we have considered. Now let's look at other free antiviruses in the top 5 rankings. In addition to the name in the list below, we indicate the general position among all (both free and paid) antiviruses, as well as the experts’ assessment on a 5.5-point scale and the percentage of the compliance we calculated from the experts’ assessment with a certain abstract ideal, for which we take 100 %. One hundred percent is a perfect product, which, of course, cannot exist. But thanks to this indicator, you can more clearly see the real difference between programs - it is not as significant between some places in the ranking as it seems. With percentages, some people will perceive the picture better than with points, and even on a 5.5-point scale.

In addition to the five free antivirus programs listed above, Roskachestvo examined two more. We did not include them in the final ranking due to very low results. This:

• Windows 10 Defender - 17th place - 3.5
• ZoneAlarm Free - 21st place - 3.0

If the latest product is little known to the general user and is unlikely to appear on the computer of an inexperienced person in security matters, then Windows Defender ( Windows Defender) is nothing more than the built-in antivirus protection of Windows 10. The operating system comes with this tool by default. Many believe that thanks to this program there is no need to install third-party antiviruses. But as can be seen from the test results, it provides rather poor protection. Therefore, it is better not to rely on the built-in Windows Defender system, but to install some third-party free (or paid) product. There is no need to uninstall Windows 10 Defender after installing another antivirus program - after a reboot, the new tool will completely take over the protection, and the standard Defender will be automatically turned off.

Having considered the top 5 free antivirus programs for Windows 10, we can come to the conclusion that The best antivirus is Bitdefender Free. As for other places, then Avast, Avira, and AVG show results close to each other(by the way, Avast and AVG are now part of the same company and these antivirus programs are extremely similar). Therefore, if for some reason the user is not satisfied with the Bitdefender Free program, then you can install any other program from the listed free ones. It is worth noting here that the fastest antivirus program in the entire ranking is Avira Free. In terms of impact on computer performance, Avira took first place in the Roskachestvo rating.

You can download free versions of the best antiviruses using the following links:

• Avast
• Avira (choose “Download for free” - “Download only Antivirus” to avoid installing many non-functional paid components)

The best free antivirus in terms of speed

We have already mentioned that in the same Roskachestvo study on which we rely in this article, antivirus programs are analyzed not only by the level of security they provide, but also by their speed and impact on computer performance. Follow the link to find out which antivirus program for Windows 10 is the fastest.