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- Avast actually has two lines of paid products, both powered by the same antivirus engine. They have similarly clean interfaces, too. But the Avast One line focuses on identity and privacy concerns, making it arguably the better choice for most people.
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Compare Avast Free Antivirus vs. Avast One using this comparison chart. Compare price, features, and reviews of the software side-by-side to make the best choice for your business.
May 14, 2024 · Avast One provides strong, broad defense against online threats, with features that make an upgrade from the free version (or Microsoft Defender) worthwhile.
Jun 17, 2024 · Why We Picked It. In 2016, Avast acquired AVG. Now, both products use precisely the same antivirus technology under the hood. When you install AVG AntiVirus Free, you’re getting the same ...
Apr 19, 2024 · Avast One Gold brings you the company's award-winning antivirus protection, along with a no-limits VPN, a basic firewall, and a selection of security, privacy, and performance tools.
- Lead Analyst For Security
- Avast
- The new name for Avast's consumer security range
- Interface
- Antivirus
- Ransomware Shield
- Blocking malicious sites
- Network protection
- Avast SecureLine VPN
- Password Protection
- Software Updater
- Privacy extras
Avast One interface has a light and airy look, with friendly graphics and speedy access to all of One's core features.
Looking to run a scan, connect to the VPN, or accelerate your system, for instance? No need to go browsing through various tabs, then try to remember wherever everything is. Just scroll down and there are shortcuts to scans, the VPN, and others, and you can run them all in a couple of clicks.
Clicking the Explore button displays a full list of Avast One's features, which does look a little more complicated. But it's easier to understand what's on offer when you can see everything in one place, rather than browsing around a number of tabs. And if you don't understand something - what is 'File Shield', exactly? - clicking the option gets you a simple explanation (the File Shield allows Avast to scan every file you access to make sure it's safe.)
Several options aren't available in the free Avast One Essentials (Webcam Protection, Web Hijack Guard, Driver Updater, and more.) Some free apps don't mark these, so you're forever clicking buttons and being told 'Can't have that until you upgrade, you freeloader.' Avast highlights options you can't use with a padlock, a smarter approach that makes One Essential much more comfortable to use.
Avast One's antivirus features begin with the Smart Scan. Launch this with a click and it runs a 10-15 second Quick Scan for malware, combined with checks for dubious browser add-ons and PC performance issues. (It doesn't look for missing software patches, unlike the previous Avast Antivirus, although you can still do this manually.)
The Smart Scan and Avast's real-time protection should spot most threats, but the package has plenty of other options. There's a Deep Scan (previously called a Full Scan) to check your entire system; a Targeted Scan which examines specific files or folders, and a Boot-Time Scan to check for threats before Windows fully starts. And, if that's not enough, you can create custom scan types to do whatever you like.
There are plenty of configuration options, too. You're able to define what to scan (all hard drives, the system drive only, removable drives, archives, and more), how to treat any threats, set scan priority to optimize performance, and more.
On-demand scans
The engine supports running on-demand scans in parallel, a level of flexibility you won't always see elsewhere. If you're running a lengthy full system scan, for instance, you're able to run a separate targeted scan on a removable drive you've just connected, and maybe check some recent downloads, all at the same time.
This didn't always work smoothly. Although My normal on-demand scans ended with a reassuring 'we didn't find anything' message, the Scan History page warned that 'your Explorer Scan was unable to scan all files', and 'we suggest scanning again.'
Install Avast One and it automatically detects folders with user documents, then adds them to Avast's Ransomware Shield Protect list. Untrusted apps aren't allowed to modify the contents of anything in these folders without permission.
Sounds good, and sure enough, Avast correctly added the main user folders to its Protected list. It wasn't so smart at detecting others, though, missing folders containing thousands of documents.
That's a problem, especially as there's no sign of any issue. Avast One doesn't tell you it's running this document search, and unless you happen to click the Ransomware Shield option, choose 'View protected folders' and browse the list, you might never realize Avast has missed something.
If you happen to find the option, though, it's easy enough to understand. I spotted the problem and added my extra data folders manually in just a few seconds.
Shield fully activated; I ran my ransomware simulator again. This time Avast One raised an alert as soon as it accessed a file, I chose the Block option, and it wasn't able to touch anything on my system.
Once I did, Avast raised an alert as soon as my ransomware simulator or other untrusted apps attempted to access the files, and they weren't able to do so until I gave permission.
Avast One doesn't just do a good job of detecting malware: it detects and blocks access to malicious websites, reducing the chance you'll get infected in the first place.
This isn't an area where Avast has always excelled in the past, but the company looks to have upped its game. Just to make sure, I assembled a collection of box-fresh phishing URLs to run my own tests, comparing Avast One with Bitdefender. That delivered a positive result, with Avast detecting 67% of threats compared to Bitdefender's 41%.
Avast One doesn't include the Avast browser extensions anymore, which means users miss out on one or two useful web-related extras (there's no highlighting of malicious links in your search results, for instance.) I think that apps messing with my browser setup are generally a bad idea, though, and Avast Online Security can still be installed separately if you need it.
On balance it's a great web protection package, especially as you don't have to buy Avast One Individual to get it: all this web filtering power comes for free in Avast One Essentials.
Avast One Essential includes a simple firewall that monitors your network traffic and aims to prevent hackers from penetrating your system and malware from phoning home.
You can also view a list of apps using your connection, the amount of data they've transferred so far, and manually decide to block them.
Upgrading to the paid Avast Individual apparently gets you more shielding of your system and detection and user alerts for port scans and ARP spoofing attacks (an exploit that may allow hackers to infiltrate your network.)
Although this sounds reasonable, I'm not sure how much functionality it adds to the regular Windows firewall. I'm not convinced by all the talk of interaction with the user, either. Norton and Bitdefender's firewalls are still my network favorites, not because they raise alerts and have plenty of tweaks and settings, but because they don't need all that: they do a great job of intelligently managing your network connection all on their own, no manual intervention required.
Installing the free Avast One Essential gets you a restricted (but still very useable) version of Avast's HideMyAss!-powered SecureLine VPN.
The major restriction is there's no support for choosing a location: the app just automatically connects to your nearest server, wherever it might be. So, you can forget about unblocking streaming platforms in other countries. It's not going to happen.
There's a data limit, too, although that looks relatively generous at 5GB a week. Avira's Phantom VPN gives you a miserly 500MB a month, Bitdefender's VPN offers 200MB a day (6GB a month), and even Windscribe's excellent free plan stops at 10GB a month. Proton VPN's unlimited data plan is still top of the free VPN list, but Avast is way better than most.
Speeds were much more ordinary. My local server managed only 45Mbps, well below average, though enough for browsing and occasional use.
Avast's Windows app has a capable kill switch which correctly blocked my internet access whenever the VPN dropped. I used some very drastic techniques to simulate various problems - turning the router off and on again, crashing the OpenVPN executable - but the app just blocked my internet, displayed an alert, and got me reconnected as soon as possible.
SecureLine can automatically connect whenever you access insecure Wi-Fi. That's handy, but there's a very unusual extra: it can also warn you to connect whenever you visit a banking site, a web store, a 'sensitive' site (adult, gambling, violence, more), or any website login screen. This could save you a lot of trouble if you regularly forget to connect. Bitdefender Premium VPN does something similar with even more site categories and app types (file sharing, P2P), but I've not seen this functionality from anyone else.
Avast One doesn't include a password manager, but you do get a couple of extra protective layers designed to keep your credentials private.
All versions of Avast One have the option to scan a database of data breaches (provided by dark web monitoring experts SpyCloud) to find out if their account details have been exposed.
Avast One's paid products add breach monitoring, where the app automatically checks new breaches and warns you if your credentials are included.
The paid editions also include Browser Protection, a feature that limits access to passwords stored in your browser. I tried using a couple of NirSoft tools to access Chrome and Firefox passwords and Browser Protection worked perfectly, spotting the attempt, and blocking access until I approved it.
Avast One Essential's Software Updater scans your apps, detecting and listing missing updates. It'll install them, too, although you must manually click an Update button for every app you'd like patched.
Upgrade to Avast One Individual and you get the ability to automatically update all your apps. I tried this, and Software Updater found six available updates, downloaded the patches in parallel, then silently installed them, all in a very few seconds.
This looks good and performs reasonably well, especially the free version. Avira's free Software Updater tells you about missing updates but won't do anything to install them until you upgrade.
Avast One only supports updating 50 common apps, though, compared to 150 for Avira, and hundreds for some of the free patch management competition. Still, it's a useful tool and I'm glad to see it included in the suite.
All Avast One users (free and paid) get access to a Clear Browsing Data feature, where you can quickly clear away your browsing history, cache, cookies, and more. This works much like every other web cleanup tool you've ever used, but Avast does deserve credit for its wide app support: the module cleaned Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, and eve...
- Lead Security Reviewer
Apr 17, 2024 · Pros. Excellent antivirus lab scores on multiple platforms. Near-perfect score in our phishing test. Free protection for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. Numerous privacy and performance features....
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