Our 3 Favorite Alternatives for Malwarebytes Antivirus in 2024

1. TotalAV Antivirus

SecurityScore:

9.7 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	No
On-demand Scanning	Yes
On-access Scanning	Yes
Behavior-based monitoring	Yes

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What Makes TotalAV a Good Malwarebytes Alternative?

One of the things we liked most about TotalAV was its Smart Scan capabilities. This let us run quick scans on our computer where it looked in common areas that malware hides, just like Malwarebytes’ full scan. But it could still scan our full system too, unlike Malwarebytes, and it could do it on a set schedule. So if you want fast scans that check critical areas of your device, we like TotalAV more than Malwarebytes.

Malware Scanning

Our main gripe with Malwarebytes was its malware scanning capabilities. TotalAV did not let us down. In our test with sample malware from the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR), TotalAV found it through a manual scan when we hid it in two layers of archived .zip files. Here’s a quick overview of our tests:

We ran a similar test with Malwarebytes, except we hid the malware in five different file types. It detected one out of five malware samples.

Overall, we liked TotalAV more since it could scan our entire computer. We scheduled automatic scans once a week at 2:00 a.m. on a Wednesday so it never interrupted us even though it took about an hour.

Customer Support

When testing TotalAV, we could get in contact with live support by giving them a call. That meant if the software told us we had an issue that required our immediate attention, we could call them up if we had any questions. It also meant if we received a phishing email pretending to be TotalAV, we could confirm whether or not it was actually them.

They also offered an email for support, but it took 24 hours before we got a response and they didn’t promise a response until 48 to 72 hours after they received our message. We always prefer live chat features on a website, but a live phone number got the job done better than Malwarebytes.

2. Surfshark Antivirus

SecurityScore:

8.9 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	No
On-demand Scanning	Yes
On-access Scanning	Yes
Behavior-based monitoring	Yes

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What Makes Surfshark a Good Malwarebytes Alternative?

While we haven’t said much good about Malwarebytes yet, one of the things we liked was that it came with a VPN in its Security+VPN and Complete Protection plans. Well, Surfshark started out as a VPN company and it’s one of our favorite VPNs. As such, its VPN is more capable and it showed. When we tested Surfshark VPN, it delivered faster speeds and more locations to connect through, and it cost about the same as Malwarebytes VPN.

Malware Scanning

Surfshark is another lightweight antivirus software, although it gave us three options for scanning our computer. These three options were:

• Quick Scan: Running quick scans took us about 10 minutes and looked at our Documents, Desktop, and Downloads folders. That’s not too thorough, but that’s why it’s the quick scan and not the only scan.
• Full Scan: Thankfully, Surfshark let us scan our entire computer, giving it a leg up over Malwarebytes.
• Target Scan: When we downloaded questionable files, we always ran target scans before opening them. This scanned the specific file we told it to, keeping things quick but thorough.

Customer Support

When it came to customer support, Surfshark nearly hit our gold standard. And that’s a 24/7 live chat support that’s easy to find with plenty of self-support options. Surfshark has it all except the live chat support feels hidden.

You need to navigate to the Help Center from the “Resources” tab and then at the bottom of that page, the option to access live support will eventually load. They put a delay on the live chat support option so it doesn’t load right away. Now that you know how to find it though, Surfshark’s live chat can help you out anytime you need it.

3. Norton Antivirus

SecurityScore:

9.5 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	Yes
On-demand Scanning	Yes
On-access Scanning	Yes
Behavior-based monitoring	Yes

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What Makes Norton a Good Malwarebytes Alternative?

If you’re looking for the software that’s the best at detecting malware, Norton is hard to beat. Its scans definitely take longer than Malwarebytes, but that extra time does not go to waste. You can also bundle all of the same services as Malwarebytes offers, including 3-bureau credit monitoring and identity insurance. And while Norton costs more, the quality across the board beat Malwarebytes in our hands-on testing.

Malware Scanning

AV-Test is an independent firm that tests how well different antivirus products identify malware. They found that Norton has identified all of their malware samples since 2020. But they have had more than a few false positives. These tests also don’t say how good an antivirus software is at finding malware in your computer.

That’s why we run our own tests. With Norton, we downloaded sample malware from the EICAR and hid it as XLSX, EXE, DOC, XLSM and SLX files. Then we ran a complete scan of our computer to see how many of them Norton could find. We did the same thing with Malwarebytes. Here are the results for both:

Three out of five for Norton might not seem great either, but that’s the industry standard we found after running the same test on over 40 different antivirus providers. So, we still felt safe with Norton on our computer and phone.

Customer Support

Remember that gold standard that Surfshark nearly hit? Well, Norton hit it. They gave us every option possible to contact support, including Facebook Messenger and X. They also had a 24/7 phone line, live chat support, and plenty of self-help articles. Basically, if you need any type of support while using Norton, you’ll be able to get it no matter the circumstances.