7.6/ 10
SCORE

AVG Antivirus

Score Breakdown

Performance 9/10Security 7/10Customer Support 7/10Usability 9/10Value 7/10Features 7/10

Pros

• Robust protection from both online and offline threats
• Resource-light scans
• TuneUp makes it easy to improve device performance
• Variety of safe browsing and anti-tracking tools

Cons

• Data sharing with third-party services
• Extremely slow VPN
• Subpar customer support

AVG offers a variety of cybersecurity tools to keep your devices and accounts safe, including freemium antivirus software with an impressive feature set that landed it on our best antivirus and best free antivirus lists. But is it the right fit for you?

I performed intensive hands-on testing of AVG’s Ultimate plan, focusing on usability, performance, security, customer support and value. My experience was a mixed bag. The antivirus itself is effective, but its customer service was mediocre, and I have some concerns about its privacy policies and previous data breaches. As a result, I’m hesitant to suggest using this company’s products. Here’s what you need to know.

AVG antivirus features

AVG offers a free antivirus with features typically restricted to premium programs, such as scan scheduling and protection from advanced threats like ransomware. This version of the AVG antivirus comes bundled with a secure browser and a browser extension that blocks malicious websites and third-party tracking, things you won’t get from most other free antivirus tools. Windows users can also use the Software Updater, which automatically finds programs that need to be updated for you, on AVG’s free plan.

The lowest-tier paid version of AVG, AVG Internet Security, offers more advanced tools for boosting your computer’s performance and avoiding scam websites. This plan also lets you connect up to 10 devices to one account, which you can’t do on the free version.

AVG Ultimate offers more robust security, including a VPN, device performance enhancement tools like a startup optimizer and advanced anti-tracking tech. Like AVG Internet Security, this plan provides coverage for up to 10 devices.

However, AVG Ultimate lacks advanced privacy features like McAfee’s online account manager or Bitdefender’s digital footprint visualization, which seems particularly egregious considering that AVG sells a Breach Defender with this functionality separately. You also won’t get the identity theft protection or insurance offered by companies like McAfee and Bitdefender. 

AVG also lacks more basic safety tools like a password manager. And while AVG is compatible with MacOS, Android and iOS, some of its best features — like the software updater — are only for Windows.

Overall features score

These deficiencies result in AVG receiving only a 7/10 features ranking, the lowest ranking of any antivirus I’ve tested so far.

AVG antivirus plans and pricing

AVG’s most basic plan is free. It lets you install the core antivirus software and some basic browser protections on one device.

AVG Internet Security offers more advanced antivirus features and customer support. There’s a single-device AVG Internet Security plan for $40 in the first year and $78 per year after, which is significantly more expensive than the basic single-device antivirus plans from other top companies like Bitdefender and Norton. There’s also a 10-device option priced at $60 for the first year and $100 per year on renewal, with the option to share protection among five “AVG family” members. This second option is notable, as most other antivirus companies require you to sign up for a full, expensive security suite to get coverage for 10 devices or multiple people.

AVG Ultimate, the priciest plan, covers 10 devices starting at $60 for the first year and rising to $140 per year on renewal. This plan includes AVG’s AntiTrack, VPN and TuneUp programs to help you fully protect and optimize your digital experience. You can add up to five “AVG family” members to extend coverage to your partner, kids or other close relatives.

AVG antivirus usability

I purchased an AVG Ultimate plan and spent a few days testing its account navigation, core antivirus interface and additional tools. I found the setup and basic navigation of AVG’s programs to be largely intuitive, with only one minor hiccup.

Account navigation

Logging into my AVG account took me directly to the account dashboard, where I found clearly labeled links to the payment center (often hard to find with other antivirus software like McAfee), subscriptions area (where you can download the software) and account settings. It’s not as pretty as the account dashboards for companies like Bitdefender or Norton, but it is effective, and that’s really all you need.

This page also includes links to free tools from AVG, including a password generator (which creates strong passwords but doesn’t help you store them) and a secure browser (which blocks third-party tracking and ads). Below those are prominent links to both the community support forums and AVG’s official customer support.

In short, the page contains everything you’re ever likely to need from AVG, savings you the searching you might have to do on other antivirus tools’ dashboards (looking at you, McAfee).

Installation and setup

Installing AVG’s tools was less simple than I’d hoped. The Install button at the top of the My Subscriptions page opened a list of tools included in my subscription, but I could only select one tool at a time. Worse, selecting a program didn’t make a download button appear. I had to close the pop-up and scroll down to get installation links for each program. I didn’t find a link to download them all together, which is frustrating since people who buy the AVG Ultimate plan presumably want to use all of the tools they’ve purchased.

I downloaded the antivirus first. This took a couple of minutes and a few clicks, roughly the same as other tools like McAfee and Bitdefender. The program also installed AVG’s secure browser, which surprised me since I had to download everything else separately.

Once installed, AVG opened the antivirus dashboard. It didn’t instruct me to run an immediate scan, but the Run Smart Scan button was easy to see alongside icons for the web shield and other tools included with the core antivirus. The one tool not readily apparent in this window was the scan scheduler, which I had to access through the Run Other Scans menu.

AVG’s mobile antivirus is easy to install through the Google Play Store and requires only a few clicks to give it permission to scan and protect your phone. Once installed, the app is easy to navigate, though a lot of space is devoted to trying to get you to download other AVG apps.

Additional tools

Once I had installed the antivirus and connected it to my AVG account, a pop-up appeared with a button for downloading the rest of AVG’s programs — a pleasant surprise since I had expected I’d have to tediously download each program separately. I was further impressed to find these programs installed in around 1 minute.

Most AVG programs are functional immediately after installation, with intuitive dashboards for performing core tasks. However, the AntiTrack tool requires you to manually enable browser protection, create a browser cleanup schedule and configure system privacy settings such as improved login security.

You may also want to perform additional setup on the secure browser, enabling specific safety settings and disabling others. However, the default settings provide enough security for the average person, so you may not need to fiddle with them. The browser’s also simple to use, with an interface similar to browsers like Firefox and Chrome. The one significant difference is that AVG’s secure browser uses Bing for search instead of Google.

AVG also offers a free secure browsing extension for Google Chrome, Safari and Microsoft Edge. This extension helps you opt out of most large third-party tracking systems, like Amazon ads, and the whole process takes only a few minutes. You can also configure it to block some or all cookies and other data collection. This extension isn’t supported on Firefox anymore, but that doesn’t mean Firefox users are totally unprotected. The Web Shield, which scans sites for signs of untrustworthiness, protects people on all browsers.

Overall usability score

AVG’s account dashboard is refreshingly simple, and despite my initial confusion over how to download the programs, setting them up was mostly intuitive. I would like scan scheduling to be more prominent or even one of the installation steps, like it was for Norton, but it’s no more complicated to find than Bitdefender or McAfee’s scan scheduling tools.

This gave AVG a 9/10 usability ranking,the same score earned by most antivirus tools I’ve tested.

AVG antivirus performance

Next, I tested AVG’s security tools for performance — how quickly they worked, how many resources (like processing power) they used and how much they affected my ability to perform simple tasks like surfing the web and editing images. Most of AVG’s tools, with the exception of the VPN, exceeded my expectations in this area, using minimal resources while still completing tasks at a fast pace.

Note: I performed these tests on a Lenovo ThinkPad with an Intel i5 processor. Your results may vary, especially if you’re using an older machine.

Background performance

AVG Internet Security, the core antivirus software, ran efficiently in the background while I surfed the web (usually keeping five to 10 tabs open at once, sometimes with additional tabs in a second browser), collected test screenshots and edited images.

Task Manager showed that AVG Internet Security was using 0.1% to 0.5% of my CPU and no disk space while running in the background. This was the case throughout my testing days.

Active scans

My first AVG deep scan used only 1% to 2% of my CPU’s processing power and no disk space, making it similarly efficient to Norton’s deep scan and much more efficient than comparable scans run on McAfee or Bitdefender. The scan also took only around 10 minutes, which is once again pretty similar to Norton’s deep scan time. My second and third deep scans were even more efficient, using less than 1% of my CPU’s processing power and taking around five minutes. 

The Smart Scan, which also checks for operating system issues and outdated apps, was faster still, taking only 3 minutes, though it did use slightly more processing power (2%). This scan suggested fixes for the issues it found, with a Resolve All button at the bottom of each section to have AVG fix everything for you. The CPU usage did increase slightly while AVG resolved issues, but it was still minimal (between 3% and 5%), and the fixes were completed within 5 minutes.

Additional tools

Next, I tested the TuneUp tool, which you can open on its own or through the Performance Scan option in the main antivirus. This scan took around 30 seconds — so little time that I didn’t even get to check Task Manager for its resource usage — and delivered an extensive list of suggestions for improving my computer’s performance. Like the antivirus smart scan, TuneUp also gives you options to have AVG clean up data and fix other performance issues for you.

TuneUp completed most of its performance-enhancing tasks within a couple of minutes. The longest task, data cleanup, took closer to 5 minutes and used between 10% and 20% of my CPU’s resources. This means you might not want to perform resource-heavy tasks like video editing while you’re running TuneUp, but it won’t take long for the program to finish its work. Moreover, its fixes can significantly improve your computer’s overall performance.

AVG’s AntiTrack program and online security tools didn’t interfere with my internet usage in any significant way. The most annoying thing was that AntiTrack notified me every single time it blocked a tracker, but this was actually useful for my test since it let me know the tool was working. The pop-ups also included an option to disable or limit these notifications, so this isn’t something you have to deal with the entire time AVG AntiTrack is enabled.

The other downside of AVG’s online security tools is the limitations of its Hack Check. This tool starts searching for data breaches the instant you enter an email address and gives you fast results, but those results aren’t as detailed as what you’d get from McAfee’s data breach tracker or Bitdefender’s digital footprint visualizer. All Hack Check says is, “Some accounts connected to this email have been hacked, change your passwords.” While this can be useful, it’s not enough information to help you choose the sites you want to disconnect from.

Finally, I tested the VPN to determine its impact on internet speed. I started by running Ookla speed test three times without the VPN activated. My average internet speeds were 3 Ms (milliseconds) for ping, 644.71 Mbps (megabits per second) for download and 694.72 Mbps for upload. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Next, I tested internet speed with my fastest VPN server — the one closest to my location, in Canada — activated. The results were discouraging, with the average ping rising to 34 Ms, download speed decreasing to an average of 264.93 Mbps and upload speed decreasing to an average of 239.34 Mbps. These are dramatic shifts for a VPN server in my own city and made my internet usage significantly less pleasant.

Next, I moved on to testing internet speed with the VPN in different countries and got the following averages:

While not as thorough as our testing process for VPN reviews, these tests are enough to show that AVG’s VPN majorly impacts internet speed. In fact, it slowed my internet down more than any other VPN I’ve tested during my antivirus reviews. The extreme slowdowns I experienced when using the internet with the VPN set to France and Germany were particularly brutal.

If you’re looking for a security suite with a decent VPN, I recommend Norton, which has the highest-performing VPN of any security suite I’ve tested so far. However, Norton’s VPN still isn’t the best. You’ll get much better performance if you separately purchase one of our top-rated VPNs.

Overall performance score

Most of AVG’s tools are fast, effective and resource-light, allowing you to perform even high-resource tasks while running active scans or fixes. However, the VPN dramatically reduced my internet speed even when using the server closest to my location, so I can give AVG only a 9/10 performance ranking.

AVG antivirus security

AVG’s tools are intuitive and, with the exception of the VPN, efficient, but how secure are they? I answered this question by analyzing tests from third-party labs and reviewing AVG’s security and privacy policies to determine how committed AVG is to protecting its customers’ data.

The first portion of this research was promising, as AVG received excellent security rankings in all of its recent third-party tests. It also has excellent processes for protecting VPN privacy. However, it may share data with third parties, including law enforcement, and there are some questions about the company’s overall data security.

Antivirus

AVG’s antivirus engine has consistently earned a 6 out of 6 security ranking from AV-Test since 2022. AVG also regularly receives awards from AV-Comparatives and notably had a 99.3% online detection rate and a 99.96% online protection rate, on par with other top-ranking tools like McAfee and Norton.

The offline detection rate, which represents how effectively AVG finds viruses on things like USB keys, was also quite high at 97.7%. This is outmatched only by Bitdefender’s 98.7% offline detection rate.

Security for additional tools

AVG’s VPN is a no-logs VPN, which means it doesn’t collect data about the websites you visit or activities you perform with the VPN activated. The only data it collects is overall usage data — raw numbers telling AVG how much data is processed through its VPN. AVG protects this limited data with AES-256 encryption, an internationally recognized protocol used by many VPNs and other cybersecurity programs like password managers.

Privacy policy and data breaches

AVG has an extensive privacy policy explaining the data it collects, starting with the concerningly broad “personal data.” My main qualm here is the inclusion of personal data collected from third-party sources, including third parties such as marketing companies deliberately engaged by AVG to collect more information about you. This means AVG could have a pretty much endless supply of your personal data.

The billing and account data sections are more straightforward, confirming that AVG stores all of the data it needs to keep your account active and manage your billing cycles. The product data section states that AVG stores basic information about your device, location, error logs and unsafe sites or apps. Product data is collected primarily to improve AVG’s effectiveness and efficiency. It collects communication data — information about your interactions with customer service — for the same purpose.

AVG says it will generally use your data only to improve its products and processes, but there are a few other instances where it may disclose your data, such as when a third-party payment processor is required to set up a subscription. AVG further states that it may disclose your information to service providers for customer relationship management, analytics and marketing. Again, this language is concerningly broad, but AVG does at least provide some concrete examples of these providers, like Salesforce for CRM and Google Analytics.

Additionally, AVG says it will share your data with public authorities in specific instances where it’s legally required to do so. AVG’s headquarters are in the Netherlands, which is part of the Nine Eyes Alliance, meaning that any country within the alliance, including the US, can legally request this data. AVG also doesn’t say anything about anonymizing your data, which means it may be able to provide legal authorities with a considerable amount of information about you.

These terms may not be ideal, but they’re pretty standard in the antivirus space. I’ve yet to find an antivirus company that doesn’t disclose data to third parties, and only Bitdefender specifically talks about anonymizing data.

What’s more concerning is AVG’s 2023 data breach. Detected by InsecureWeb, a highly trusted dark web monitoring company, this data breach was relatively minor — just 19.9KB of emails — but its existence is still troubling, especially since InsecureWeb states that this isn’t the first AVG data breach it’s found. Furthermore, AVG hasn’t acknowledged these data breaches or potential vulnerabilities, leaving me uncertain about its commitment to transparency.

Finally, AVG is now owned by Avast. Avast was long considered one of the best antivirus providers on the market, but it’s been fined $16.5 million by the Federal Trade Commission for selling its customers’ data. My research suggests this was done through a subsidiary, Jumpshot, which wasn’t connected to AVG and has now been discontinued. Still, more cautious people may want to avoid AVG and other companies owned by Avast.

Overall security score

Third-party testing shows that AVG’s antivirus provides effective protection from most threats. I also appreciate that the VPN doesn’t log detailed usage data and that AVG encrypts the VPN data it does collect.

However, its privacy policy has some concerningly broad language around sharing with third parties, and AVG has failed to address data breaches in the past. Moreover, its connection to Avast, a company suspected of selling large amounts of user data, is troubling. As a result, I can give AVG only a 7/10 security ranking.

AVG antivirus customer service

AVG offers a self-serve knowledge base and community forum, plus 24/7 live chat and phone support for paid customers. (Free customers have to stick with the self-serve solutions.) I tested each form of support for accessibility, speed and helpfulness. This is one place where AVG let me down, with AI systems that sent me to human support only after multiple requests and staff who couldn’t quickly answer my questions.

Knowledge base

Much like the account dashboard, AVG’s knowledge base lacks the fancier design elements you’ll find in support centers for companies like Norton, but its simple layout is highly effective. The search bar is easy to see, and there are clearly labeled links for contact options near the top of the page and prominent links to support pages for all of AVG’s products.

Individual articles provide step-by-step instructions with lots of screenshots and minimal jargon, making them accessible to those without much technical expertise. However, I didn’t find a single tutorial video, which could be frustrating for those who prefer to learn through video content.

Direct communication

AVG’s customer support follows a trend I’ve noticed when testing other antivirus tools: doing its best to keep you from speaking to a person. The Contact Options link isn’t hidden away like McAfee’s, but the process is very similar from there. You must state the type of issue you’re having and navigate past recommended tutorials to access AVG’s contact information. I also had to enter my name and contact information into a form, despite already being logged in.

The similarities to other antivirus companies continued, with AVG connecting me to a chatbot instead of a person. That said, I only had to tell the bot I wanted additional help once for it to connect me with an agent — much better than the three times I had to request human help from Norton. The agent responded right away, though they requested a couple of minutes to look through my account and files before diving into my current concerns.

However, the agent wasn’t able to immediately answer my relatively simple questions about the difference between the web shield (which protects all browsers) and AVG’s online security extension (which isn’t available for my preferred browser, Firefox). They took 2 minutes to answer, which was the case for every question I asked. In total, the interaction took a little over 10 minutes, longer than my conversations with customer support at other cybersecurity companies like Bitdefender and McAfee.

I had a similar experience when calling AVG. A robot answered, and I had to ask to speak to a person twice. I was immediately connected to a person after the second request, but they weren’t able to answer my questions either. They forwarded me to the technical department, and I spent 2 minutes waiting for a response.

From there, an agent walked me through some troubleshooting processes, but they weren’t able to help me improve my VPN speed. I suspect this has more to do with the VPN being a poor product than a failing on the part of customer service. Still, having to jump through hoops to receive any significant assistance is frustrating.

Overall customer support score

Apart from using the VPN, dealing with AVG’s customer service was the most frustrating part of my test experience. The lack of videos in the knowledge base was notable, the system’s determination to keep me away from human support was annoying, and the staff’s helpfulness was limited.

These setbacks, combined with the lack of email support, result in AVG receiving a 7/10 support ranking.

AVG antivirus value

Finally, I compared AVG’s plans with offerings from other top antivirus companies. Here’s a quick look at what I found:

We can draw a few conclusions based on this data:

• AVG is one of the few top antivirus companies with a free option. While others, like Avira, also have a free version, the biggest names in the industry require at least some investment if you want their protection.
• AVG offers the lowest-cost 10-device plan. McAfee’s unlimited device plans start at $90, much more expensive than the 10-device AVG Internet Security plan, and Bitdefender doesn’t offer any 10-device plans.
• AVG’s most advanced plan is more affordable than other top-level security suites. However, it’s not really comparable to those suites because it lacks advanced digital privacy tools and identity theft protection. 

Overall value score

In short, AVG ismuch more affordable than other antivirus tools, especially if you want to protect multiple devices. But its low prices are offset by its limited features. It’s still useful for the average person, but it’s not particularly worthwhile for power users with many online data concerns or those with significant assets.

This nets it a mediocre value ranking of 7/10,the lowest of any antivirus I’ve tested so far.

AVG: Is it right for you?

First let’s break down how AVG performed in our review subcategories:

• Features: 7/10
• Usability: 9/10
• Performance: 9/10
• Customer service: 7/10
• Security: 7/10
• Value: 7/10

Bringing these numbers together gives AVG an overall ranking of 7.6/10. This is the lowest score of any antivirus I’ve tested so far. The software itself performs well, but it lacks many of the features you’ll get with security suites from companies like Bitdefender and McAfee. I also have significant concerns about AVG’s commitment to protecting user privacy, and the customer service was frankly unpleasant to work with. 

As such, I can’t recommend paying for AVG. However, it may be worth downloading the free version if all you want is an antivirus with more robust protection than Microsoft Defender.