Best Antivirus | Top options for 2026

In 2025, cyber threats are smarter and scarier . But anti viruses are also stepping up their security game with new features to protect users online. And since we test so many providers here at CyberNews , who better to reveal to you which antivirus apps will keep you the safest this year . If you're ready, let's see who made the cut as the best antivirus 2025 contender . Regarding testing, reputation, and security features , Norton, Total AV, and Bit Defender have been the anti virus industry leaders throughout 2024 and even before . For that reason, I'll be comparing the three of them side by side to help you better decide which suits [music] your needs best . As always, our exclusive Cyberne discount link is waiting in the description for all of these anti viruses , as well as some bonuses I'll mention later . As with any best anti virus breakdown, analyzing independent testing results is crucial . Usually, this helps to narrow down which provider has stronger anti-malware capabilities . However, the most recent three of today's antiviruses came out with identical scores across the board . Norton, Total AV, and Bit Defender [music] were successfully able to detect 100% of zero day and 4-week [music] old malware and scored 5.5 out of six in performance and 6 out of six in usability . [music] Considering that these results are very consistent throughout their testing histories , the three picks [music] definitely qualify for best anti virus for Windows 11 options . That said, we also wanted to test out the apps for ourselves to see how the results would match [music] up . Our Cyberne News research team did this by planting 150 malware samples onto a device and then running two separate tests . One with the full scan and the other time with real-time protection . So, how did our results compare to the expert ones ? Well, Norton's full scan took around 13 minutes to complete with the CPU usage ranging between 20 and 30% . Overall, it was able to detect 135 out of 150 malware samples planted . The real-time results were slightly different . Here though, the detection time took considerably longer than the full scan , and CPU usage fluctuated between 5 and 50% . If we compare these detection rates to Total AV, on the other hand