ESET Antivirus Cost and Plan Pricing

Regardless of what we think of their antivirus software, ESET’s pricing is nothing if not a bit of a hot mess, which is why we did all of the research to give it to you as plainly as possible. Let’s begin!

For Free?

We tried out ESET for 30 days without paying, but there’s no unlimited free subscription. Still, we’re glad that we didn’t have to commit to a year, two years or three years without actually trying the antivirus software out for ourselves. But after the initial 30 days, we had to cough up some dough.

Subscription Options

ESET’s pricing is a bit of a mess, with different plans for desktop and mobile devices. Let’s start with their more comprehensive packages that include antivirus software, plus a few extras.

Desktop (and Android)

ESET’s prices are definitely a little high, as we’ve seen one device covered for a year for $10 less than $39.99 (you do the math). But in general, antivirus software is on the pricey side, so we recommend buying subscriptions for longer time periods for more devices to unlock the most savings.

You might be wondering what is the actual difference between the Essential, Advanced and Ultimate plans. We cover this more extensively in our ESET review, but here’s a little summary of what each plan covers.

However, some people may want to stick to antivirus software only. If that’s the case, ESET offers basic and advanced software for Macs only, as well as Androids, which we’ll get to in the next section. We went with the Cyber Security Pro for Mac because we wanted the most advanced antivirus software and the NOD32 version on Windows, but here’s a breakdown of how all of the plans differ.

Basically, the Cyber Security plans are the same as the Essential, Advanced and Ultimate Protection below, except without those extra features like safe transactions, photo encryption and a password manager. You can choose from one, two or three years from one to 10 devices, with the Pro plan; the regular Cyber Security plan only supports a maximum of five devices. Hey, we don’t make the rules!

Mobile

Finally, if you just want antivirus protection on your Android device, there’s Mobile Security for Android, which is available for free if you’re okay with just antivirus and not protection against phishing and insecure payments. However, if you want those extra features, the Premium subscription works on up to five devices for up to three years.

Here’s the exact pricing:

What We Liked

While we’re not going to go into extreme detail about the testing process behind the Cyber Security Pro for Mac package, we can give you a little information on what we liked most about the software:

• Free trial: We liked that we could try out ESET for free without worrying about losing money.
• Discounted long term contracts: With up to three year plans, ESET gave us discounts the longer we signed up for.
• Solid Android app: While we wish they had an iOS antivirus app as well, the ESET Mobile Security & Antivirus app on the Google Play store was easy to use, reflected in its 4.7-star rating.
• High malware detection: It’s hard to get much better than detecting 99.8 percent of malware in the past four months.

• Detected four out of five viruses: In our testing, ESET performed well, in the top percentile compared to the other antivirus software we’ve tested.
• No history of breaches, vulnerabilities, or lawsuits: This is a huge rarity when it comes to antivirus companies. Many have pretty sordid histories with multiple vulnerabilities leaking user information, hackings, or simply lawsuits from disgruntled customers. ESET’s clean background made us trust them that much more.

Student Discount: How To Get It

Whether you’re a current student or a past student still clinging to your .edu email address, you can get half off Internet Security simply by giving them your email. Here’s the pricing with and without the student discount:

How To Cancel

If you try ESET out fnd you’re convinced it’s not the best antivirus software, you can return it for up to 60 days after your purchasing data for a full refund, which includes the free, 30-day trial. This is more than enough time to make your decision, so we love that testing out ESET didn’t require any dire financial straits on our part. Booya!