Bitdefender vs Avast: The Battle for the #1 Spot

In a world where technology is involved in every little detail in our lives, it can be challenging to avoid inconveniences like viruses, malware, and trojan wares. That is why we find that there are hundreds of antivirus software providers on the market. And every day, new vendors are appearing and competing with other vendors on the market. 

This abundance of antivirus software providers can be a little confusing for someone who just wants the best protection for their data, personal info, and devices. There's no doubt that Bitdefender and Avast antiviruses are two of the best, if not the best, antiviruses on the market. Unfortunately, it is pretty challenging to compete with these two antivirus giants these days. 

Both Bitdefender and Avast provide users with the best type of protection from viruses and malware. Both vendors do that by detecting any harmful online content, emails, media, or software that tries to hack into your device's system. But one might wonder, which is the better antivirus; Bitdefender or Avast? This is what this article will be all about.

This article will go over all the little details crucial for you to decide on the best antivirus between the two best vendors on the market: Bitdefender vs Avast. We will analyze the features, pricing, apps, customer support, protection efficiency, system performance, and more.

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Bitdefender vs Avast: Quick Overview

Short on time? Here's a brief overview of both antiviruses to help you decide on the best antivirus:

 

Bitdefender vs Avast: Who Has Better Protection?

It can be quite challenging to compare between two antiviruses when it comes to protection. But the excellent quality of antiviruses does not depend on their ability to remove viruses and malware only. It is essential to ensure that the antivirus does not remove essential system files while scanning for and removing malware from your PC. This is why it's essential to take notice of false positives.

According to AV-TEST data, both Avast and Bitdefender score 6 points on Windows and 5.5 points on Mac regarding protection. So, you can expect a relatively similar performance from the two antiviruses. However, it is only fair to mention that Bitdefender offers a more extensive defensive feature list, which gives it an advantage over Avast.

Malware protection

The amount of protection that Avast offers depends on your subscription type. With the paid version, you get a lot of focus on network protection; meanwhile, in the free version, the focus is on the background rescans for threats that already exist on your device. So, with the paid version, you would have to deal with a lot less malware because most of it wouldn't even pass the network barrier and end up on your device. After all, Avast won't allow it to pass through its precautionary web measures.

As for Bitdefender, we can say that the same applies to it regarding network protection. However, we can vouch that it provides much better network safety tools even in its basic version. This means that you won't have to be stuck with the scanner and real-time protection tools only. Instead, you would find many tools that would help you avoid the annoyingly frequent scans. This way, you will save time, and your device's resources won't be overused like in Avast's case.
 

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Scanning

When it comes to scanning, Bitdefender lacks speed in the scanning area. For example, it would take Bitdefender twice as long as it would take Avast to do a full system scan. However, the difference is almost unnoticeable when it comes to quick scans, but we can say that Avast performs better than Bitdefender.

It is also important to mention that you cannot do anything else with your device when you're doing a scan with Avast until the scan is complete. Meanwhile, with Bitdefender, you can still use your device without it crashing as Bitdefender performs the scan on your device.

Firewall protection

Both Bitdefender and Avast have network security toolkits. However, while Avast's interface looks attractive and friendly, Avast would rarely inform you of anything helpful, even with all the scans it performs. As a result, most of the time, their services cannot detect whether some of the unknown devices on the network are malicious or not.

A plus point for Avast is that it allows you to customize your firewall's boundaries. This way, you can make sure to avoid messing with the ports your house members are using.

Bitdefender isn't much better when it comes to firewall customization, either. However, they still offer more detailed information and allow you to use your device while it's undergoing a scan. Therefore, we can say that Bitdefender's firewall is more convenient than that of Avast.
 

Bitdefender vs Avast: Who Has Better Features?

If you're using Windows, the feature list of Bitdefender is much better than Avast's feature list. Bitdefender is definitely much better at protecting Windows than Avast is. But if we look at the multi-platform support, Avast is better at features on Apple devices. 

But since Apple has a better built-in protection system, we believe that Windows needs more protection by antivirus software, and therefore, Bitdefender scores higher in this aspect.

Shared Features

Here are some of the features that both Avast and Bitdefender offer:

 

Both Bitdefender and Avast offer network protection plans to ensure your safety online. Bitdefender offers a Network Threat Prevention plan that protects your home network against exploits, botnet URLs, phishing emails, and other threats. Avast offers a Wifi Network Security plan that includes DNS cache protection and performs as a monitoring tool that ensures that no malicious agents are on the same network as your device.

As to Ransomware protection, both antiviruses offer protection from it. However, Bitdefender's ransomware protection keeps copies of your most important files so you can restore them if you ever fall victim to ransomware.

Both Bitdefender and Avast proved themselves quite reliable when it comes to Updating your software. Bitdefender offers a Vulnerability Assessment feature that analyzes your network, device properties, uses software, and generates a personalized security report that advises you on better protecting your device. Meanwhile, Avast offers a Software Updater feature that automatically updates your programs.

Both Bitdefender and Avast offer optimization features that clear up space on your device to help it perform more smoothly. In addition to Bitdefender's Anti-tracker feature, which minimizes the online tracking, you face while surfing the internet. Avast also offers a similar tool with its Premium plan.

As for VPNs, All versions of Bitdefender include a VPN. Unfortunately, it is limited to 200 MB/day, but it is still helpful if you want a reliable VPN. However, with Avast, if you want a VPN, you can subscribe to their Avast Ultimate plan, which offers a VPN within its features.

Bitdefender and Avast offer a file-shredder tool that allows you to get rid of files you never want to see again. This is extremely useful when you need to get rid of private data that you no longer need. In addition to the file-shredder tool, Bitdefender and Avast both offer webcam and microphone protection tools. These tools deny suspicious requests to your camera and microphone, which means that you can rest assured that no one is listening to your conversations or watching you through your webcam.

Bitdefender also offers an Anti-theft tool that locks up your device and tracks its location in case of theft. This tool is provided by Bitdefender on all types of devices. As for Avast, they offer this feature on Android devices only.

This two antivirus software are more attractive because they both offer secure browsers that would come in handy. As for Bitdefender, it offers the Safepay Browser, which has built-in payment security measures. Avast, on the other hand, offers Avast Secure Browser, which blocks ads and trackers.
 

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Unique features

Here are the features that are not shared between the two antiviruses:

You might have noticed that Bitdefender offers much more unique features than Avast does. Bitdefender, for example, has the Rescue Environment feature, a malware removal tool that removes malware as your device is rebooting. This feature is crucial because some toolkits cannot be removed when you're booted into the system. And most of the system scans happen when you're booted into the system.

Bitdefender offers another feature called Adjustable profiles, which detects what you're doing with your device to toggle particular modes so that it doesn't bother you when you need privacy, like when you're playing a game or making a video call, or watching a movie.

Another great feature that Bitdefender offers is a password manager. This feature helps you manage your account credentials, store your payment info, and sync them on all of your devices. In addition to a password manager, Bitdefender offers email filtering, which helps you filter out unwanted emails, so you don't keep seeing them in your inbox.

As for parental control, Bitdefender offers this important feature which allows you to set up device limits and control how it can be used and which web pages it can access. However, Avast offers a separate app for its parental control feature, so it's not included within the antivirus plan. In addition, the Avast parental control application is only compatible with Android and iOS.

Avast offers one feature, and Bitdefender does not, and that is the Secure sandbox feature. This feature allows you to isolate suspicious apps in a sandbox to determine whether it's safe or not. In addition, it separates the app so that it doesn't infect system files in case it has malware.
 

Bitdefender vs Avast: Impact on PC performance

When it comes to PC performance, both antiviruses impact it negatively to an extent. Avast, for example, smuggles in a reasonable amount of bloatware with its installation. In addition, its services occupy a significant amount of memory, so this might slow down your PC big time. This can be super inconvenient for weaker devices that don't handle much memory usage.

As for Bitdefender, it takes a lot more storage space than Avast does. However, it doesn't impact your PC performance as severely as Avast does. That is due to their intelligent profile management system. So whenever Bitdefender is in full background check mode, you can be away from your device.

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Bitdefender vs Avast: Pricing & Plans

Here are some of the most important plans and prices for both Avast and Bitdefender:

 

Bitdefender vs Avast: Customer Support

Both Bitdefender and Avast offer the same customer support option; however, Avast makes email and live chat exclusive to the paid versions of the antivirus.

Both antiviruses offer FAQs and knowledge bases if your issue is minor and does not require a customer support agent getting involved or helping you. The downside of Avast is that it only offers email and live chat for paid plans users, which can be a little inconvenient for the free version users. 

On the other hand, Bitdefender offers all customer support services for both free and paid plans users. This is an essential extra point for them, which shows that they care more for their customers than for the money.
 

Bitdefender vs Avast: Apps and Interface

The installation process of both antiviruses is a little inconvenient. Bitdefender downloads as a 13 MB executable file that downloads the rest of the package, which is around 400 MB. This is a big load of files that might take some time to set it up and finish installing.

Avast is much quicker when it comes to installation, but they lack in other aspects. For example, Avast adds many tiny checkboxes that can be easily missed. These checkboxes have to default toggled downloads for things like Opera or Avast Secure Browser. As a result, many users can easily miss these boxes and not remove them, which is inconvenient to many.

Both apps, however, are easy to use and navigate. Avast is less incompetent due to the number of pop-ups to upgrade to the paid version that appears on your screen. Bitdefender gets an extra point for not doing that pop-up advertising thing.

Desktop apps

Bitdefender has several app options that you can choose to install or skip. For example, you can install the malware scanner or VPN service separately, or you can choose to download the whole package.

Avast offers one option only, which is their full app. You can remove the paywall if you upgrade to the paid version, but that is the whole deal. So you don't have many options at hand when it comes to Avast installation.

Mobile apps

Bitdefender and Avast both have better Android versions than iOS versions. The Bitdefender app has only browser protection, a VPN, and an account privacy monitor, which is considered lacking compared to their desktop version. The Avast iOS app version has a VPN, web protection, and a photo vault.

However, when it comes to Android apps, the features are a lot better and more functional. For example, Bitdefender's Android app has all the features of the iOS app plus a malware scanner, anti-theft tools, and an app lock. On the other hand, Avast offers RAM boosting, device tracking, and protection against malicious websites.

We can say that both antiviruses' versions of the iOS apps are useless. Meanwhile, the Android apps are pretty useful, especially for Bitdefender.

 
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Final Verdict

Avast antivirus is a popular, well-trusted antivirus. Still, as we reviewed in this article, it might lack some aspects, especially that they offer only the good features with the paid version of their software. Bitdefender, on the other hand, offers excellent features even for its free version users. 

No matter what plan you're using in Bitdefender, you will get the complete package. This is why we recommend Bitdefender more than Avast if you're not willing to invest in the paid versions of the antiviruses.