Our 3 Favorite Alternatives for Malwarebytes Antivirus in 2025

1. TotalAV Antivirus

SecurityScore:

9.3 /10

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Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	No
Full, quick, and scheduled scans	Yes
Real-time protection	Yes
Behavior-based monitoring	No

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What Makes TotalAV a Good Malwarebytes Alternative?

TotalAV impressed us with its Smart Scan feature. It examines critical system areas where malware commonly hides—similar to what Malwarebytes attempts. This approach keeps those scans fast. Unlike Malwarebytes, TotalAV can still perform complete system scans on a schedule. That gives you comprehensive protection while still enabling lightning-fast scans.

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 embedded the test malware in five different file formats. It detected just one out of five samples which left us concerned.

Overall, TotalAV won us over because it could thoroughly scan our entire system. We configured automatic scans for Wednesday mornings at 2:00 a.m. That way, the hour-long scan never disrupted our work.

Customer Support

We found TotalAV’s customer support through their direct phone line to be responsive and helpful. This immediate access was useful when we needed urgent clarification about security alerts. It also gave us a reliable way to verify communications claiming to be from TotalAV — an important defense against phishing attempts.

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

View Plans Links to Surfshark

Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	No
Full, quick, and scheduled scans	Yes
Real-time protection	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

Surfshark’s customer support infrastructure impressed us with its coverage. They offer 24/7 live chat support, though finding it requires some navigation. Here’s the path: go to the “Resources” tab, select “Help Center,” then wait for the live chat option to appear at the bottom of the page (it loads with an intentional delay).

Once you know where to look, their support team provides knowledgeable assistance around the clock. It’s a significant advantage over Malwarebytes’ limited support options.

3. Norton Antivirus

SecurityScore:

9.7 /10

View Plans Links To Norton

Product Specs

Virus Detection	Yes
Malware Detection	Yes
Firewall	Yes
Full, quick, and scheduled scans	Yes
Real-time protection	Yes
Behavior-based monitoring	Yes

View Plans Links To Norton

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, a leading independent security institute, evaluates antivirus effectiveness. Their data shows Norton has maintained a perfect 100 percent detection rate for malware samples since 2020.2 It occasionally generates false positives, but that’s still stronger protection than most competitors. However, lab tests don’t tell the whole story about real-world protection.

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

Norton sets the gold standard for antivirus customer support. They provide every conceivable contact method from 24/7 phone support to social media channels like Facebook Messenger and X (formerly Twitter). They also have plenty of self-help articles. No matter when you need help or how you prefer to communicate, Norton has you covered.