Best Antivirus Software India | Top 10 Free and Paid Tools Reviewed

The best antivirus software in India will protect your device from all kinds of viruses, spyware, phishing attacks, and other kinds of cybersecurity threats. Using these antivirus solutions, you’ll be able to maintain your online security, secure your iOS and Android devices, and wipe out any existing viruses from your system.

It can be difficult to pick the best antivirus protection with the number of offerings online growing from year to year. Today, we’ll be going over the cream of the crop and comparing them on their pros, cons, and features to find the best antivirus software in India for your needs. Read on to find out how top solutions like TotalAV, McAfee, and Norton can help you rid your device of viruses and maintain 24/7 protection.

The Best Antivirus Software India 2023 | Top 10 Shortlist

In our testing, TotalAV has shown itself to be the best antivirus software in India. With its combination of real-time protection, rapid scans, excellent support for mobile devices, and a plethora of other features, it provides unparalleled antivirus protection. Let’s see how it compares to the rest of the field:

1. TotalAV — Overall, the Best Antivirus Software in India | Put it to the Test With its 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee Now.
2. Norton — Top Antivirus Software India With a Massive Money-Back Guarantee of 60 Days | Try it for Free With its 7-Day Free Trial.
3. Nord Threat Protection — Excellent VPN and Antivirus for Complete Online Security | Try it Out With the 30-Day Guarantee.
4. Surfshark — Full Software Suite With Malware Protection | Put it to the Test Using Its 3-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
5. McAfee — The Best Virus Protection for Anti-Ransomware Capabilities | Use it Free for 30 Days.
6. Avast — Best Free Antivirus for PC | Try the Paid Plans for Free With Their 30-Day Guarantee.
7. Kaspersky — Best Antivirus For Windows 10 in Business Settings | Take Advantage of Its 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
8. TrendMicro — Best Free Antivirus Software India for Anti-Phishing Measures.
9. Intego — Excellent Choice for Mac Users With Anti-Ransomware Features.
10. Avira — Free Antivirus Software With Superb Antivirus Scan.

The Top 10 India Antivirus Companies | Reviewed

Now, let’s take a deep dive into the best antivirus software for India. We’ll be looking at each solution’s price, features, pros, and cons and comparing them to the rest to help you find the best antivirus. Let’s get to it.

1. TotalAV — Overall, the Best Antivirus Software in India

TotalAV is a household name in the antivirus world. With over 30 million users and multi-award-winning performance, it’s the best antivirus app, regardless of whether you want to protect your desktop or mobile devices against online threats.

TotalAV gives you total protection against all forms of cyberattacks ranging from phishing to ransomware and spyware.

TotalAV provides first-class real-time protection to all devices it’s installed on. This means every time you’d visit a malicious website, open a malicious email, or the like; it’ll immediately put a stop to it.

Even if you download a secretly malicious file, the download will be stopped and deleted. This, alongside its Wi-Fi protection, ensures you can browse the internet carefree.

On top of this, the antivirus gives you a lot of control over each scan. Not only can you choose which specific parts of your device it’ll scan — letting you save time by not running full device-wide scans each time — but you can also schedule your scans.

This turns antivirus scans from a time-consuming chore into something you can just schedule and forget or do quickly if time is of the essence. If an uncommon or dangerous file, such as a phishing site launcher, is found, it’ll immediately send you an alert.

There, it’ll ask you for permission to access it, and alongside its cloud scanning and protection, you’re almost entirely protected from so-called zero-day attacks.

The TotalAV WebShield will even protect you from data leaks. With payment and banking apps becoming more common, it’s crucial to keep your information secure.

Even without an antivirus entering your system, it’s possible for this data to leak. Regardless of how this happens, TotalAV will immediately alert you of the leak the moment it pops up on the dark web or any of its other sources.

From there, all you need to do is change your credentials, and you’ll be completely safe.

Pricing

TotalAV starts at $29 for the first year, with a $119/year renewal every year after that. This plan covers 3 devices — plenty for most individuals and some families.

Put TotalAV to the test risk-free using its 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don’t enjoy it for any reason, you’ll get a no-questions-asked refund.

2. Norton — Top Antivirus Software India With a Massive Money-Back Guarantee of 60 Days

Norton is trusted by over 50 million users, with the highest threat detection rate on Windows devices; it’s no surprise it’s one of the best India antivirus solutions.

One of Norton’s biggest selling points is its excellent and swift customer support. If you’re facing any kind of issue with the software, Norton will immediately connect you to an agent that’ll help you.

Besides this, Norton boasts the highest threat detection rate on Windows devices through its immensely powerful scans. It features many scan options to customize how and when you’d like your device to be scanned.

However, what makes it one of the best antiviruses for Windows 10 is its “Norton Insights” section. If you’ve ever forgotten to schedule your scans or simply didn’t know when you should conduct them, this feature is for you.

It’ll automatically alert you when it thinks your device is due for a scan, according to its analytics.

Another time-saving aspect of this feature is that it allows you to run custom scans on only the most suspicious parts of your PC or mobile device. You can scan a single file, drive, or even partition.

This lets you spend less time scanning and more time using your device. On top of this, Norton’s Dark Web Alerts feature will immediately notify you if any of your credentials, such as social media passwords, banking details, or the like, leak onto the dark web.

This lets you avoid potential theft by changing your credentials as soon as your data leaks. If you’d like to secure your data even further, Norton’s cloud backup feature keeps a backup of your files so you can restore them in case something happens to your device.

Pricing

Norton starts at a mere $19.99 for your first year and renews at $59.99/year. With its Antivirus Plus plan, you also get a 2GB cloud backup, password manager, and more. However, it’s worth noting that this plan protects just 1 device.

If you want to protect more than one device and have more parental controls alongside a VPN and dark web monitoring, you should look at Norton’s Select + LifeLock plan.

Try Norton now with its extremely generous trial period. You’ll get a 7-day free trial on top of its massive 60-day money-back guarantee.

3. Nord Threat Protection — Excellent VPN and Antivirus for Complete Online Security

Nord Threat Protection comes in a package with one of, if not the best VPN service. Despite being a peripheral solution, the antivirus does an incredible job of protecting your online security.

The app features real-time anti-malware protection, halting all connections to dangerous websites and emails. If you intentionally try to connect to a website the app deems malicious, it’ll give you an alert asking your permission to continue.

On top of this, it’ll immediately scan any downloads and delete them if there’s anything suspicious. This makes Nord Threat Protection an excellent tool for getting rid of ransomware and adware.

If you’re concerned about your online privacy, you’ll be happy to know Nord Threat Protection uses constant URL trimming. This technology takes all trackable parameters off URLs.

This, in turn, allows you to browse the internet without your activities being tracked through your searches’ URLs. Nord Threat Protection does even more to streamline browsing, blocking all adverts and popups off of sites you visit.

These three features, alongside the VPN, allow you to browse the internet securely and in perfect anonymity. You’ll never have to think about ads, trackers, or malicious websites ever again with this solution.

Pricing

Nord Threat Protection provides a lot of plans. However, the best bang for your buck is the 2-year + 3 free months options. These start at just $2.99/month, giving you antivirus protection, an excellent VPN, and an ad blocker all in one.

The Complete plan gives you all that plus a data breach scanner, NordPass — one of the best password managers, and 1TB of cloud storage.

If Nord Threat Protection sounds like the antivirus for you, give it a go for free using its 30-day money-back guarantee.

4. Surfshark — Full Software Suite With Malware Protection

Surfshark Antivirus comes as part of the Surfshark One package. Made by the Surfshark company, in just 30 months, the antivirus obtained 1 million users due to its easy-to-use UI and many peripherals.

The software comes with a VPN, a safe search engine, and a dark web scanner, all at an extremely budget-friendly price tag.

Most antiviruses place a palpable load on your system’s speed. However, Surfshark is extremely lightweight, running 24/7 in the background while barely making a dent in your CPU or RAM usage.

This makes it the perfect choice for 3D artists, gamers, and workaholics. The tool has a powerful yet versatile scanner providing three distinct kinds of scans:

The capability to run scheduled and manual scans, in addition to Surfshark’s automatic scans, makes this one of the most flexible solutions on this list.

Surfshark’s Cloud Protect System is similar to TotalAV’s Rare File Alerts. The feature analyzes all unknown files on your system to prevent zero-day attacks.

This, in addition to a solid VPN, helps you browse the internet without a care in the world, and rest easy that Surfshark will pick up the slack even if you make a mistake.

The Dark Web Scanner scours the dark web for any mention of your private information. In the age of digital payment apps, it’s incredibly important to keep your credentials safe, and Surfshark lets you change them before anyone can get the better of you.

Pricing

Surfshark starts at a measly $2.05/month and features no renewal hikes. This makes it one of the cheapest antivirus products on the market.

On top of this, Surfshark’s tiers don’t differ in their features, so you don’t have to worry about what plan to get in terms of features. The only difference between the plans is how long they last, with the longest being the cheapest per month.

If $2.05/month doesn’t convince you, give Surfshark a go risk-free using its 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. McAfee — The Best Virus Protection for Anti-Ransomware Capabilities

McAfee is an amazing choice for beginners. If you’re looking for individual assistance from in-house experts, there’s no antivirus better for you than McAfee.

Although all of the best antiviruses in India have detailed, step-by-step tutorials through text, McAfee assigns a human professional to assess your situation and help you do your first scan.

McAfee has another interesting feature for beginners — the Protection Score. This is an overall rating of how well your device is functioning and its total health. It’s measured on a scale of 1 to 1,000.

Unless your score is in the high 900s, McAfee will list various things you can do to improve your device’s health. This, in turn, makes it much easier to self-diagnose any issues that might pop up with your system.

An example is that if your email or other account gets compromised, it’ll immediately show up as a corrective measure. Then, after changing your password, the Protection Score will increase.

This gamification makes it much easier to do the tedious parts of maintaining your online security. McAfee does this and more through an incredibly intuitive interface that automatically updates.

Through this, your system always stays up-to-date and is prepared to defend itself against ever-evolving threats.

Finally, if you’re looking for a single solution to cover your whole family, you’ll be happy to know McAfee provides its services to unlimited devices on its premium plan. It’ll even block all of the adverts online so you can have an easier time browsing the web.

Pricing

McAfee’s cheapest plan comes up to $19.99 for the first year and will provide coverage for up to 10 devices, which is ideal for families with basic cybersecurity requirements.

In case you’d like to get more out of the tool, you can get identity monitoring, one of the best parental control apps on the market, as well as a multitude of other features for $44.99 for your first year.

If you’d like to try McAfee risk-free, there’s a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. This makes it a total of two months you can try the tool without paying a dime.

6. Avast — Best Free Antivirus for PC Devices

Avast Antivirus Pro is the best free antivirus for users in India. It boasts a massive user base of over 400 million and supports all major operating systems other than Linux.

The tool provides comparable functionality to many weaker paid solutions. You get access to in-depth scans alongside quarantine measures for potential threats. It also equips you with four shields:

Each of these is tasked with guarding a specific portion of your device. This, alongside the ability to run different kinds of scans, makes Avast the ideal way to protect your iOS and Android devices alongside your computer for free.

Avast also has a unique scan option — the Boot-Time Scan. If you’ve ever encountered a virus that was difficult to remove or didn’t go away after cleanup — that’s what it’s here to solve.

The Boot-Time Scan runs before your system is done booting up, finding and eradicating the virus before it’s able to set up defenses. On top of this, Avast scans peripheral devices like CDs, USB drives, DVDs, and more.

This, coupled with its in-depth security updates that come monthly, make it an excellent tool if you’re looking to get 360-degree security for free. That said, Avast never quite reaches the level of the best paid antivirus products.

Pricing

Avast’s entirely free plan gives you a firewall, anti-ransomware, and data leak alerts. This is by far the most feature-rich free antivirus plan on the market and can even compete with some paid solutions on a single device.

Avast’s premium plan costs just $3.33/month and covers 10 devices, in addition to adding a fully-fledged VPN to its offerings. You can try Avast Premium Security for free today using its 30-day money-back guarantee.

7. Kaspersky — Best Antivirus for Windows 10 in Business Settings

Kaspersky is the best antivirus app for businesses, especially those running on Windows. This is mostly because it features a variety of personalized setups for all kinds of businesses.

Their plans range from small businesses with 1-50 employees to enterprises with over a thousand employees.

Kaspersky combines simple yet extremely effective scanning with a robust real-time protection suite.

If you’re looking for a solution that won’t overwhelm your employees but will still provide more than enough protection for you not to worry about their online activities, look no further than Kaspersky.

One of the best things about it in this regard is that if its quick scan finds a problem, it’ll automatically launch a full scan without you needing to do a thing. On top of this, Kaspersky has a triple-layer security protocol which is perfect for complex systems.

It combines its scanning with a shield to protect your business from attacks and implements a defensive checklist to keep potential attacks in check.

All of this, alongside Kaspersky’s High-Tech Protection capabilities, leads to Kaspersky being the market leader in finding and resolving zero-day malware in business settings.

High-Tech Protection will also alert you of malicious websites or links by color-coding all URLs based on their perceived threat level. This leaves less up to your employee’s judgment and lets them navigate the internet safer and easier.

Pricing

The Kaspersky standard plan sits at $16.99 for the first year and guards 3 devices.

The premium plan — which is geared towards smaller businesses — protects 20 devices and comes with 24/7 remote support, a routine PC health check, and more.

If Kaspersky sounds like the right fit for your business, you can try it for free using its 30-day money-back guarantee.

8. TrendMicro — Best Free Antivirus Software India for Anti-Phishing Measures

TrendMicro is among a very small minority of antivirus products that offer free spyware removal.

Despite being relatively limited in scope, this feature called HouseCall is quite intuitive and is an excellent choice for families looking to protect the elderly or children from phishing attacks.

TrendMicro, as a whole, is pretty simple and easy to use. For instance, all that you have to do to use it is run the software and click on Start Scan. The solution features extremely high-intensity scans with over 99% virus detection rates.

However, an issue many similar antivirus products face is their scans being extremely lengthy due to this quality. Instead of demanding this, TrendMicro offers quick and custom scans.

With its custom scans, you’ll be able to scan individual files and folders for suspicious activities without making a dent in your system performance.

Furthermore, while TrendMicro does expand its threat database through every user, the process for extracting the virus details into its database (Smart Protection Network) holds no logs of your specific activity.

Similar to Kaspersky’s Security Network, your information will not be held on TrendMicro servers, but they’ll still use the virus data they get from you to improve the service.

On top of all this, TrendMicro is incredibly intuitive, and the HouseCall feature will show you your privacy concerns in real-time. This lets you optimize your security approach and ensure that you can protect your family from attacks.

Even if it’s something as small as an outdated Facebook password, TrendMicro will spot it.

Pricing

TrendMicro has various pricing plans, ranging from an entirely free plan with basic functionalities to high-tech IoT protection, parental controls, and more. The lowest-priced package starts at just $19.95 a year and will provide you with all the fundamental functionalities.

However, if you’d like to extend TrendMicro’s protection further onto IoT devices, routers, and so forth, you might be better off with one of its premium subscriptions. With the highest subscription, you’ll get:

And more. If TrendMicro sounds like the best antivirus India for you, you can give it a go risk-free using its 30-day free trial.

9. Intego — Excellent Choice for Mac Users With Anti-Ransomware Features

Intego is different from most antivirus solutions on this list, as it separates macOS and Windows users in its plan. This means that you won’t be unable to protect your Mac on the same subscription as you might your Windows device.

That being said, its highly specialized nature makes it a great choice if you’re looking for a Mac-specific antivirus.

This antivirus immediately quarantines any suspicious files and notifies you about them. From Intego’s dashboard, you’ll easily be able to look at and decide on the quarantined file.

You can either choose to delete it and have Intego deal with it, or you can choose to restore it and keep your files. This can be extremely helpful for torrenting and similar activities, where you might want to keep files that might usually flag as malicious around.

On top of this, this provides false positive insurance. This means that even if Intego makes a mistake and detects a legit file as a threat, you can always overrule the antivirus.

This approach of giving you the final say is apparent through the tool’s approach to your online security. Everything has a cleanly presented setting you can turn on or off, letting you fully customize your experience.

Finally, with Intego’s Prevention Engine, you can rely on the tool to use its AI-assisted learning to detect and prevent zero-day attacks.

By relying on machine learning, Intego will be able to reverse-engineer a solution for or quarantine an attack that has never been attempted previously.

Pricing

Intego was built from the ground up for Mac and features 3 plans. Each of them is outfitted with slightly different features, gaining access to data theft protection, a firewall, and more on the Mac Premium Bundle X9.

If Intego sounds like the best antivirus for your Mac or Windows device, you can try it risk-free today using its 30-day free trial.

10. Avira — Free Antivirus Software With Superb Antivirus Scan

Avira boasts 35 years of experience producing anti-spyware and anti-malware software and is a decorated antivirus solution. One of its most exciting aspects is its free plan — an uncommon feature for a first-class antivirus.

Now, right out of the gate, Avira doesn’t cover as much ground as TotalAV, Norton, or Nord Threat Protection. However, it’s incredibly beginner-friendly, combining a one-click installation with a one-click online scan.

Albeit entirely free, the online scan is incredibly powerful, matching the power of many paid solutions. Because of this, if all you’re looking for in antivirus is a quick and powerful scan, Avira might be the choice for you.

Furthermore, the lack of features works to Avira’s benefit regarding system impact. It’s one of the most lightweight antivirus solutions on this list, clocking in quite close to the likes of Surfshark.

It’s fully capable of running in the background 24/7, and chances are you won’t even notice its impact. Naturally, it has real-time protection capabilities to ensure you stay protected while browsing the internet.

On top of this, Avira does have some peripheral tools, plugins, and software. A good example is Avira Browser Safety — a high-quality spyware cleaner that protects your system from all threats.

Another standout plugin is Avira’s in-built ad blocker that’ll stop you from clicking on malicious popups and ads and help you browse the internet unrestricted.

Pricing

Avira has a free plan with most of the above features alongside a 500MB/month free VPN.

If you’d like to get more advanced peripherals such as data breach monitoring, automatic cleaning, and more, you can get Avira Antivirus Pro starting at $26.99.

Avira boasts a massive 60-day money-back guarantee, meaning you can try it for a full two months without risking a penny.

The Best Antivirus Programs in India | Compared

The table below outlines the key details of each of our best antivirus solutions in India; take a look and compare the market’s top 10, head-to-head:

How Does an Antivirus Work?

Antiviruses generally work on one of two principles:

1. They scan files and programs when they enter your device and compare their data to its database of known viruses.
2. The antivirus scans programs or files already on your device and compares them to that database.

There have been innovations on this front, with many of today’s top antiviruses not relying exclusively on databases but incorporating machine learning to learn what virus-like behavior is.

Why Do I Need an Antivirus in India?

There are many reasons why you’ll need an antivirus wherever you are, and India is no exception. Some of the biggest reasons include:

It Protects You From Online Threats 

Viruses and hackers are a much larger threat than they were a few years ago. Today, we all hold sensitive information digitally. Whether this is payment information, personal data, or identity information, it’s important to keep it safe.

With the best antivirus in India, you’ll never have to worry about your data getting stolen again, and you can ensure it’s under your antivirus platform’s watchful eye 24/7.

Safe Browsing

Most viruses arrive through the internet — namely from dubious sites, emails, and ads. With attacks growing increasingly sophisticated, sometimes it can be hard to know if your next click will go to a legitimate site or a phishing attempt.

With the best antivirus products, you’ll be able to forget all about this. Real-time protection ensures that all the websites and emails you open are thoroughly checked for malicious activity.

If a site or email is deemed unsafe, your antivirus will let you know and ask how you’d like to proceed. Furthermore, the top solutions will get rid of ads, so you won’t run the risk of getting infected through a popup.

Improve Device Performance

Not all viruses directly harm your device. They can also take up your system resources for malicious purposes (such as crypto mining or using your device as part of a botnet.) This, in turn, leads to lagging and even freezing.

With an antivirus, you’ll be able to eliminate these performance inconveniences from your life. On top of this, many of the top solutions come with cleaners that’ll delete unnecessary files off your device to bring it up to speed.

Peripheral Features

Many antiviruses, such as Nord Threat Protection or TotalAV, come with peripherals, including VPNs, password managers, and more. Oftentimes, these are bundled together in deals where you can get one of the tools for free or at an extremely low price.

By taking advantage of these deals, you can get a full online security suite for a much lower price than you would if you were getting it piecemeal.

Free Antivirus VS Paid Antivirus Services

While paying for an antivirus might seem strange given the power of some of the free options on this list, it’s not as clear-cut as it might seem at first glance.

While a free solution like Avira or TotalAV’s free plan will be enough for basic usage, such as conducting a scan or enjoying some real-time protection, they’re severely lacking compared to their paid counterparts.

Not only do you miss out on amazing peripherals, higher-quality customer support, better scans, and protection, but there are even risks associated with free antiviruses. They are notorious for being shady with user data and sometimes even outright selling it.

With paid solutions, you’ll usually get more powerful and customizable scans alongside some ransomware protection and system cleanup tools at a minimum. With many tools, you’ll get unrestricted VPNs, password managers, IoT protection, and more.

However, if you’re uncertain if a paid antivirus is worth your money, there’s a way to find out without risking your safety on free antiviruses.

All of the paid solutions on this list have a money-back guarantee or free trial, allowing you to try them risk-free for a limited time.

In fact, if you exhausted every free trial and money-back guarantee on this list, you’d get over 6 months of first-class antivirus protection for free.

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Antivirus Security Software

There was a lot to consider when picking the best antivirus in India. We’ve used four main criteria to guide our decisions:

Real-time Protection

Once a virus has entered your device, the damage might already be done, and it could be too late to get rid of it. To minimize the odds of this happening, you’ll need real-time protection.

This means the antivirus should scan every website, email, and Wi-Fi network you interact with. If it finds danger, the antivirus should alert you and halt the interaction.

Defense Surface 

Today’s hackers are incredibly smart, with attack vectors evolving daily. Viruses can come from anywhere: malicious sites, shady emails, adverts, or downloaded files.

Because of this, we’ve prized versatility in finding the different kinds of viruses and so-called “day zero” protection. This is a type of protection that shields you from malware before it’s registered in a malware database.

Speed

Not everyone has the time to run scans that span hours every few days or weeks.

Because of this, we’ve mainly looked at antivirus solutions that are lightweight and have scan options you can easily run in the background without significantly slowing down your system.

Aside from in-depth scans, none of the solutions we’ve looked at today should take too many resources.

Customer Support

Your antivirus solution shouldn’t need you to be particularly tech-savvy to use it, if at all. Because of this, we’ve valued an excellent customer service experience highly in this list.

Whether you’re having issues setting up your antivirus or you’d like to configure it to protect your router, customer support should be just a couple of clicks away.

Naturally, it’s also extremely important that the antiviruses we choose have professional customer service capable of helping you when these issues arise.

Antivirus Software India FAQs