Which free shield should your PC wield?

AVG features easy green and red indicators to let you know the security status of your PC.

© AVG

EVEN IN THE PRIVACY of your home, you exist in a world where it’s not safe browsing the internet unprotected. Someone somewhere wants to breach your personal information and use your data for monetary gains in some way or another, and it sucks, right? Whether that be through phishing, viruses, spyware, malware, etc, it’s important to have trustworthy antivirus software, and you may not even need to pay for it. It’s just worth having the peace of mind that you’ve got that extra level of security behind you.

We’ve chosen our two favorite webprotection applications to help you stay a little safer the next time you’re browsing the web. With both offerings being bigtime players in this field and providing a range of services to keep you protected, our two contenders for this head-to-head are AVG Free and Avast One Essential. Which one should you opt for?

As of Monday, October 3, 2016, Avast acquired a majority stake in AVG, meaning they operate as one single company, yet they decided to keep both applications separate. Adding more spanners to the mix, another antivirus giant, Norton, acquired Avast in 2020, so they now own both. Confused much? Norton aside, Avast and AVG have been competing for around 30 years, and have different qualities to differentiate them both. Starting things off, we’ll be taking a look at AVG Free.