Read our full Bitdefender Mobile Security review. It's our choice for the best Android antivirus app. If you want more data, you'll have to pay $7 monthly or $50 yearly.īut at $15 per year, Bitdefender Mobile Security is well worth the expense. The built-in VPN client gives you only 200MB of free data per data - just enough to check your email while traveling. The separate Bitdefender Antivirus Free for Android app (which is indeed totally free) only scans for malware. It also has robust privacy-protection tools, including an app lock, a Wi-Fi scanner, anti-theft features and data-breach notifications. A newly added feature, Scam Alert, flags possibly malicious links in SMS text messages, messaging apps and screen notifications.īitdefender Mobile Security offers a 14-day trial period, but this is not a freemium app.
The best Android antivirus app you can getīitdefender's Android security app has nearly flawless malware protection, a very light performance impact, Android Wear watch integration, a VPN client and a malicious-website blocker that works with most Android browsers. We remain committed to helping our readers to source and find the best products and will offer multiple alternatives in the categories affected. You should rely on something else.įor malware protection on other platforms, be sure to visit our pages on the best antivirus software and the best Mac antivirus.Įditor's note: Future, the parent company of Tom's Guide, has chosen to stop doing business with Russian companies, including Kaspersky. Sadly, it's terrible at protecting against malware. The last app, Google Play Protect, is installed on every Android phone that runs Google Play. Yet there's little third-party lab-test data on Lookout's antivirus efficiency, so we don't really know how well it protects against malware. Lookout Security & Antivirus was one of the first mobile antivirus apps and has a compelling identity-protection option. Its malware protection is very good, but it lacks a Wi-Fi network-security scanner.
The free version of Kaspersky Mobile Antivirus has no ads, and its call-blocking and anti-theft features work well. But Avast's anti-theft and call-blocking tools didn't work well, and both apps show lot of ads - unless you pay them not to.
New Android malware steals your passwords and your 2FA codes before taking over your phone.Īvast Mobile Security and McAfee Mobile Security offer a lot of features for free and do fairly well in malware-detection tests. Dozens of Android phones using a UNISOC chipset can be hacked, and there doesn't seem to be a fix.
Here's how to be sure you don't have it installed.
Softpedia offers an ever-growing collection of APK files that are completely clean and always updated to the latest version.- A malicious Android app steals Facebook passwords.
It got 5 points for protection, 3.5 points for usability, and 0 points for the features it comes equipped with by default.Ĭertainly, running antivirus solutions on your Android phone won’t fully protect you against malware, so make sure that you always install apps from trusted sources. The lowest score goes to none other than Google Play Protect, which received 0 points for protection and features and just 5.5 points for usability.Īs for third-party apps published on the Google Play store that disappointed in this research, it’s the so-called iNetCop OnVaccine, which scored a final rating of just 8.5 points. The antivirus products that scored the maximum rating got 6 points for protection, another 6 points for usability, and 1 point for features, with a final score of 13 points. You can check out the full results in the graph attached to the article to see the other antivirus apps that topped the charts in this new research. Unsurprisingly, the best apps are the ones that have always ranked the highest, including here Avast Mobile Security, AVG Antivirus, Bitdefender Mobile Security, Kaspersky Internet Security for Android, Sophos Mobile Security, and Trend Micro Mobile Security. If you’re on Android and just want to install apps from all sources without getting your device infected by malware, you’re probably looking for a capable antivirus product to block compromised APK files.Īnd while there are a lot of security products on the Google Play Store, not all of them are worth installing, and new research conducted by German antivirus testing lab AV-TEST comes to lend you a hand figuring out which ones you should try out.Ĭarried out on Android 8.0, the test evaluates the protection, usability, and features of 20 mobile security apps for Android, including Google’s very own Play Protect that comes bundled by default.