3 McAfee Antivirus Alternatives for 2026

1. TotalAV Antivirus

SecurityScore:

9.3 /10

Get TotalAV Links To TotalAV

Product Specs

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

Get TotalAV Links To TotalAV

Why Consider TotalAV Over McAfee?

If you want high-quality antivirus software but don’t want McAfee slowing down your computer, TotalAV is an alternative you should consider. While they don’t offer a firewall, instead of slowing down your computer, TotalAV speeds it up with performance-enhancement features included in every paid plan. The pricing is similar, and they still have useful add-ons, like a VPN and password manager.

Supplemental Services

TotalAV falls a bit short compared to McAfee when it comes to supplemental services. They don’t offer any packages with identity protection or credit monitoring, unlike McAfee. When we tested TotalVPN, we liked them a bit more than McAfee’s VPN since they didn’t log as much of our information, but they still weren’t one of our favorite VPNs, like Surfshark.

This provider was also missing a firewall, which can be important for some users who want extra protection. The reason we say extra protection is that the built-in firewall on almost every consumer router is pretty good these days. On top of that, both Windows and macOS include a free firewall.

Here’s an overview of TotalAV’s package deals and what’s included:

Performance

Here’s where TotalAV clearly outshines McAfee. They both offer industry standard virus protections, but TotalAV does it with significantly less computing resources. While TotalAV ran its scans on our computer, we were still able to watch “Kill Bill” in full HD without any buffering issues. With McAfee, our computer couldn’t keep up with a video stream during its scans.

On top of running scans more efficiently, TotalAV also helped speed up our computer. They deleted duplicate and junk files to free up some space on our hard drive and turned off unnecessary startup programs.

2. Surfshark Antivirus

SecurityScore:

8.9 /10

Get Surfshark Links to Surfshark.com

Product Specs

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

Get Surfshark Links to Surfshark.com

Why Consider Surfshark Over McAfee?

Is the main reason you’re considering McAfee for its wide range of online protections? If that’s the case, we recommend taking a look at Surfshark as well. They don’t offer identity theft coverage or credit monitoring, but there are still some identity protections, and the VPN you get with Surfshark is leaps and bounds better than McAfee. We also liked how we could reduce our costs by going with a two-year plan, an option we thought McAfee lacked.

Supplemental Services

Although Surfshark does not offer the identity theft coverage or credit monitoring that McAfee does in its Advanced or Ultimate plans, it more than makes up for that with its high-quality VPN. Check out our review of Surfshark VPN to see why we like it so much.

To make it quick, though, Surfshark maintains way more servers and server locations — making it quicker and giving you access to more options for connecting. Surfshark’s privacy policy gives us more confidence as well. The policy states that Surfshark deletes your IP address every 15 minutes, and that policy passed a third-party audit last year.

Here’s a brief overview of Surfshark’s plans that include its antivirus software:

So, what do you do if you also want the identity theft covers and credit monitoring that McAfee offers? We recommend pairing Surfshark with a dedicated identity theft service, such as Identity Guard.

Now, you’re probably thinking that would be expensive, right? Well, not really when you compare apples to apples. If you use McAfee+ Advanced or McAfee Ultimate+ and live in the United States, you’re eligible for credit monitoring. Their Ultmate plan will cost you $200 a year.

You can get a year of Surfshark One and a year of Identity Guard for a total of $191.73. That gives you credit monitoring for all three credit bureaus, identity theft insurance, dark web monitoring, and bank account monitoring on top of Surfshark’s device protections. In our expert opinion, Surfshark paired with Identity Guard gives you stronger protections at about the same price as McAfee.

Performance

Although Surfshark is lightweight in comparison to McAfee in that it won’t slow down your computer outside of the initial deep scan that took us about two hours, it couldn’t speed up our computer like TotalAV. During our month with Surfshark antivirus, we didn’t notice the background antivirus scans slowing down any of our tasks. It even caught a couple of files we otherwise would have downloaded, so we felt safe while using it — despite our preference for TotalAV — when only considering the quality of the antivirus itself.

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

Why Consider Norton Over McAfee?

In our in-depth testing, we found that Norton gave us everything that McAfee did, except it’s a bit better. These two industry giants are both synonymous with antivirus software. But Norton’s record of detecting 100 percent of widespread malware attacks since 2020 proves its antivirus’ effectiveness. Although, that quality does come with a higher price tag.

Bundling Options

The options for Norton and McAfee are nearly identical. They both have four tiers of service, with each tier offering more identity protections than the last. But like we mentioned, we like Norton’s services better than McAfee’s. Norton realized it can’t protect your identity as well as a dedicated identity theft protection service. That’s why it partnered with LifeLock. McAfee keeps its identity protection in-house, and it shows in their services that they’re an antivirus company first.

Everything beyond the basic Norton 360 offers LifeLock protections, with the most protections coming via Norton 360 Ultimate Plus. That plan is more expensive than the McAfee alternative by $100 per year. We think the value’s still there though. Here’s an overview of Norton’s subscriptions:

Performance

While Norton affects your computer’s performance more than Surfshark and TotalAV, it still has less of an impact than McAfee. When we tested McAfee, our initial scan took over five hours. In comparison, our Norton full scan took about 30 minutes. We also didn’t notice our computer slowing down from running Norton’s real-time antivirus like we did with McAfee, even on our laptop with 16 GB of RAM. And we know there are laptops with 32 GB of RAM out there nowadays, but a majority of people still have 16 GB at most.