Avast Free Mac Security: Best Free Option

Our Verdict

Avast offers excellent antivirus protection and minimal performance affect, making information technology a perfect solution for those looking for basic malware protection.

For

Fantabulous antivirus protection
Costless
Minimal system impact
Phishing protection
Scans for Windows malware as well

Against

Express features
Weak support

Tom's Guide Verdict

Avast offers excellent antivirus protection and minimal operation impact, making it a perfect solution for those looking for basic malware protection.

Pros

+
Excellent antivirus protection
+
Free
+
Minimal system impact
+
Phishing protection
+
Scans for Windows malware as well

Cons

-
Limited features
-
Weak support

Avast Security for Mac: Specs

Malware protection: Very good
Organisation touch on, background: Very light
System affect, scans: Moderate
macOS compatibility: macOS 10.11 El Capitan or later
Browser extensions: No
Firewall: No
Hardened/secure browser: No
Parental controls: No
Countersign director: No
Ransomware file protection: No
Browse scheduling: Yes
Webcam protection: No
VPN: No
Back up options: Online documents

Avast Security for Mac used to exist called Avast Gratis Mac Security, which put its biggest selling betoken right there in the name: Information technology'south free. Despite the proper name change, the software is still free, and that isn't the only reason that Mac owners looking to relieve some money on antivirus software should consider Avast Security for Mac.

Avast has washed away with almost all of the upselling tactics that were present when we terminal reviewed the app. The premium pick is at that place if yous want information technology, but Avast lets you use the free version without constantly hitting y'all over the caput well-nigh what you are missing.

Avast Security for Mac likewise manages to go toe-to-toe with the malware-protection functioning of its paid competitors, with consistently excellent scores in 3rd-party testing. While it may not take the bevy of features constitute in some of the best antivirus apps, Avast Security for Mac is easily the top complimentary option amongst the best Mac antivirus software available today.

Read on for the rest of our Avast Security for Mac review.

Avast Security for Mac: Costs and what'south covered

Avast Security for Mac is adequately unique in that it offers a completely free tier of service covering some of the almost prevalent concerns for Mac users, including malware protection, web and electronic mail shields and Wi-Fi security scanning.

In that location is an Avast Premium Security tier, available for $70 per year for a unmarried Mac, that introduces a couple of features appealing to those looking for enhanced security. The most crucial is ransomware protection, which acts to protect your photos and other personal files from being encrypted or changed without your permission.

The other is a feature that actively monitors your home Wi-Fi network and notifies you as shortly every bit anyone joins your it, communicable neighbors the moment they gain entry to your network.

Avast Security for Mac supports any Mac running macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) or after.

Avast Security for Mac: Antivirus protection

Avast Security for Mac relies on signature-based malware detection to identify potential threats to your Mac. It also leverages Avast's pregnant user base of 450 one thousand thousand devices to assistance identify new threats quickly.

While its primary intent is to protect your Mac, Avast Security for Mac also scans for malware targeting Windows PCs so your Mac doesn't pass on a potential Windows threat over the local network, email or a file-sharing method.

Avast updates its virus definitions automatically at regular intervals, but yous can force an update if you prefer. Avast Security for Mac will likewise browse your entire network for potential threats.

Avast Security for Mac: Antivirus performance

In lodge to determine the overall efficacy of Avast Security for Mac's malware scanning, nosotros relied on results from Deutschland-based AV-Test and Austria-based AV-Comparatives, ii independent labs that bear regular evaluations of major antivirus apps and services.

During the March-April 2021 testing by AV-Test, Avast Security for Mac detected 100% of Mac malware. During this aforementioned round of testing, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac (100%), Norton 360 Standard (100%) and Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac (100%) matched its perfect performance.

Intego Mac Security X9 and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac had been tested in previous rounds, scoring 98.5% and 100%, respectively.

	AV-Exam, near recent	AV-Test, previous	AV-Comparatives, most contempo	AV-Comparatives, previous
Avast	100%	100%	100%	100%
Bitdefender	100%	97.three%	100%	100%
Intego	98.v%	100%	100%	100%
Kaspersky	100%	100%	100%	100%
Norton	100%	100%	Not tested	Not tested
Trend Micro	100%	100%	99.6%	100%

Avast Security for Mac also avoided any fake positives in the latest round of tests, meaning that all detections of malware were accurate, but this was true of its competitors as well.

Avast Security for Mac has fallen short of detecting 100% of Mac malware threats in AV-Examination'south evaluations only twice since April of 2017. These were during the October-November 2018 (96.3%) and Baronial-September 2020 rounds (98.six%).

Turning to AV-Comparatives, Avast Security for Mac successfully identified 100% of Mac malware threats. It has scored perfectly on the AV-Comparatives test since receiving a 99.9% detection score in July of 2017. Bitdefender, Intego and Kaspersky were all part of the June 2021 test equally well and received a perfect 100% each, while Trend Micro scored 99.6% detection.

Avast Security for Mac: Security and privacy features

Avast Security for Mac offers antivirus protection that is on par with many of its paid competitors, but equally you'll come across, the full feature set is less robust.

Most of the features are centered around scanning for malware. You tin can perform a deep scan of your entire arrangement, a targeted browse of specific files or folders, a USB/DVD scan for removable media or a smart scan of just the almost likely areas for a malware infection. Finally, y'all can schedule custom scans.

The Virus Breast is the lockup for any threats detected on your organisation. You can also opt to manually add together files to information technology if you lot wish. They'll be kept safely locked away from the rest of your system until you determine what y'all'd like to do with them.

Avast Security for Mac review — (Paradigm credit: Tom's Guide)

Wi-Fi Inspector is the network security piece of Avast Security for Mac. Information technology volition place all devices connected to your router and tell you whether they are secure or not. The goals are to notice freeloaders on your network or patch upwardly the security on your own devices.

Avast likewise offers you phishing protection when using Safari, Chrome, Border or Firefox. This characteristic used to be tied to a Chrome extension, but now there'southward no demand to install anything extra to flag suspicious sites if you effort to visit them. The downside is the loss of a couple of features that came with that extension, such as website ratings and tracker blocking. (For the latter function, cheque our list of the best ad blockers.)

Avast Security for Mac: Performance and system impact

To measure the functioning impact of Avast Security for Mac, we ran the Geekbench five benchmarking examination prior to installing the app, then several times afterwards. The 2016 MacBook Pro 13-inch laptop we used had a ii.9Ghz Intel Core i5-6267U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM and a 256GB SSD with 42.18GB of files installed.

Before we installed Avast Security for Mac, the MacBook Pro achieved a score of ane,856 on Geekbench 5. This dropped simply two points to 1,854 following the installation of Avast.

This score was largely mirrored by the rest of the Mac antivirus apps I reviewed, with Kaspersky Net Security for Mac showing the biggest driblet at a mere 3%.

	Post-installation	Full scan	Quick scan
Avast	0%	27%	3%
Bitdefender	0%	19%	i%
Intego	0%	34%	three%
Kaspersky	iii%	12%	4%
Norton	0%	12%	0%
Tendency Micro	1%	46%	1%

An Avast total scan was quite a different story. That created a 27% performance hit, more than double the system impact of a full scan for Kaspersky (12%) or Norton (12%) and alee of simply Intego (34%) and Trend Micro (46%).

Avast's quick scan performance touch was fairly minimal at 3%, although that put it simply ahead of Kaspersky (iv%), with Intego (iii%) matching information technology and Bitdefender (1%), Trend Micro (i%) and Norton (0%) all with about imperceptible quick scans.

Avast Security for Mac'southward commencement deep browse took 10 minutes and 25 seconds and scanned 590,655 files. This was the second-fastest full browse in the pack, behind merely Intego (6:22), well ahead of Bitdefender (27:55) and Kaspersky (39:05) and grouped with Norton 360 (11:45) and Trend Micro (12:03).

Avast's quick scan looks at a select group of files and folders considered to be at higher risk for malware infection. On my MacBook Pro, it scanned 1,943 files in just xviii seconds. While that was fast enough for only a fourth-place terminate, it'south largely irrelevant as the trio ahead of it just barely beat information technology. Intego (00:11) was once again first, followed by Norton (00:xiii) and Bitdefender (00:16). Kaspersky (00:53) and Tendency Micro (1:06) were notably backside.

Avast Security for Mac: Interface

Avast Security for Mac has a adequately bare-bones interface, merely that makes it quite elementary to navigate. Given the reasonably thin feature fix, it'southward understandable.

The home screen gives you glanceable confirmation that your system is currently protected along with the "Run Smart Scan" push button as the dominant element on the screen. You can admission the other diverse scans by clicking the magnifying glass to the right of that button.

The other four elements on the dwelling screen are Cadre Shield, Virus Chest, Wi-Fi Inspector and Ransomware Shield. (The last 1 is locked until you upgrade to the paid version.) My one complaint with this layout is that Wi-Fi inspector is an active scan whereas the rest are settings screens or, in the case of Virus Chest, a location in which to view previously identified threats. Given the minimal options bachelor, you'll effigy this out chop-chop, only it isn't immediately intuitive.

Clicking on the magnifying glass takes you to "Scan Key," which gives you admission to the full array of antivirus scanning tools. These are Deep Scan, Targeted Scan, USB/DVD scan and Custom Scans. Deep Scan is the nigh thorough global scan of your Mac, while the rest focus on specific areas.

A targeted scan allows yous to select specific files or folders to bank check, presumably if you are concerned virtually a specific new app or gear up of files that you have downloaded. USB/DVD scan should be fairly self-explanatory, every bit information technology just ensures the safety of the contents of the external media.

Finally, we have custom scans that allow yous to set upward scans to your exact specifications. This can be a one-off or set to run as often every bit daily or as infrequently equally monthly. Selection from a deep scan, targeted scan or Mac browse, and you accept a multifariousness of advanced settings to further tune the scan and the option to exclude certain files or folders if y'all wish.

Avast Security for Mac: Installation and support

Installation of Avast Security for Mac was quick and easy. You download the application directly from Avast's website and install the 132.6MB file. From there, you lot simply need to follow the guided instructions to complete the installation, including granting permissions for Avast in privacy as well as full disk access. These are both necessary for the software to properly protect your Mac. This basic installation process takes at most 5 minutes.

Avast's back up is definitely a footstep downwards from the rest, peculiarly for those on the free tier which offers answers only via the cognition base of operations. If you upgrade to Avast Premium Security for Mac, you lot gain live chat and electronic mail options, but there's however no phone support.

Avast Security for Mac review: Bottom line

While the app itself is really more stripped-down than when we concluding reviewed it, Avast Security for Mac feels much ameliorate for it. Users are left with just the essentials to protect their Mac and aren't beingness harassed to upgrade to the paid version.

The superior malware protection puts Avast Security for Mac over the top with functioning just beneath that of the absolute top paid options. This isn't a begrudging recommendation of Avast Security for Mac — there are certainly reasons to consider top-tier paid options like Norton 360 Standard which offer considerably more features and even better protection — only if you want free malware protection on a Mac, and so Avast is the like shooting fish in a barrel choice.

A self-professed "wearer of wearables," Sean Riley is a Senior Writer for Laptop Magazine who has been covering tech for more a decade. He specializes in covering phones and, of course, wear tech, but has also written about tablets, VR, laptops, and smart dwelling house devices, to name merely a few. His manufactures take also appeared in Tom's Guide, TechTarget, Phandroid, and more than.