Every computer needs antivirus protection, and one way companies can support that aim is to provide free antivirus to the masses. But these companies can’t survive unless some users shell out their hard-earned cash for paid antivirus utilities. Piling on pro-only tools and components is one way companies encourage upgrading to a paid antivirus. Avira Antivirus Pro adds several components not available to users of Avira Free Security, but they don’t really add much value. The biggest reason to pay for it is if you want to use Avira in a commercial setting, which isn’t allowed with the free version.
Avira’s pricing is undeniably on the high side, with a list price of $59.88 per year for one license, $71.88 for three, and $95.88 for five. Admittedly, it seems to be perpetually on sale; just now, the one-license price is discounted to $44.99. That’s still higher than the sweet spot price of just under $40. Bitdefender, Webroot, and Emsisoft are all in that $40 price range, as are more than a dozen others. F-Secure Anti-Virus gives you three licenses for that price. You do pay $59.99 for a year of McAfee, but that gets you protection for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household.
As a company, Avira is moving to an emphasis on security suite protection rather than standalone antivirus. That’s evident in the promotion of Avira Free Security over the basic free antivirus. Avira’s two suite products, Avira Internet Security and Avira Prime, along with the free suite, have recently gotten a full user-interface makeover that more thoroughly integrates their components. That wave of enhancement hasn’t washed over Antivirus Pro yet, though it’s slated to join the rest by the third quarter of this year.
For now, the antivirus looks just like it did the last time I evaluated it. A launcher utility manages your Avira tools: Antivirus Pro, Software Updater, Password Manager, Phantom VPN, SafeSearch plus, Safe Shopping, Browser Safety, Home Guard, and Privacy Pal. Only Antivirus Pro is initially installed. For testing, I installed Safe Shopping and Browser Safety.
Antivirus Pro’s main window features a simple left-side menu and four big buttons representing essential protection components: Real-Time Protection, Ransomware Protection, Web Protection, and Mail Protection. These four appear on the Protection options page in the free suite, but only Real-Time Protection is enabled for free. Antivirus Pro gets all four.
Features Shared With Avira’s Free Security
In the past, Avira has made two free products available, a free antivirus and a free security suite. With the latest product line, the company has officially dropped the free antivirus, though it hasn’t been wiped from the website. Avira Free Security is a stripped-down version of the top-tier Avira Prime. It includes antivirus protection, naturally, but also integrates a password manager, a feature-limited VPN, and dozens of handy utilities. Many of these features overlap what you get in the Pro antivirus. I’ll summarize my findings about those shared features here—you can read my review of the free suite for full details.
Avira’s scores with the independent labs are quite good. All four of the labs that I follow include Avira’s technology, and until recently it boasted a perfect 10 points from my aggregate lab score algorithm. A couple slight bobbles in recent tests brought that to 9.8, but it’s still the best score among products tested by all four labs. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, tested by three labs, came in at 9.9, and Sophos, with two lab reports, at 10.
In my hands-on malware protection test, Avira detected 89 percent of the samples, the same as Spybot – Search & Destroy +AV Home Edition., and earned an overall score of 8.8 points. That’s not a great score. Tested with this same set of samples, Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus earned a perfect 10 points. On the other hand, Bitdefender, which, like Avira, takes stellar scores from the labs, came in at 8.5 points in my hands-on test. When my results don’t jibe with those of the labs, I give more weight to the labs.
For a different view of protection, I challenge each product with 100 recent malware-hosting URLs, noting whether it keeps the browser from accessing the URL, eliminates the malware payload during download, or totally whiffs detection. Avira’s Browser Safety component, which installs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera (but not Internet Explorer), completely blocked access to 54 percent of the samples and eliminated another 27 percent at the download stage. That total of 81 percent protection is way down from Avira’s previous score of 96 percent. McAfee AntiVirus Plus, Sophos, and Vipre all managed 100 percent protection in their latest tests.
Browser Safety also serves to fend off phishing sites, fraudulent sites that attempt to steal your passwords. When I tested this feature, it did much better than during my last evaluation, 93 percent detection compared with a previous score of 66 percent. Even so, quite a few others have done better. In particular, Kaspersky Anti-Virus and Trend Micro both managed 100 percent protection in their respective antiphishing tests.
Avira’s free and Pro editions both associate with a large entourage of associated Avira programs, most of them free. The Avira Connect dashboard serves as a launch pad for all the other Avira products, and it helps you connect to the online Avira portal. Especially noteworthy is Avira Phantom VPN, which protects your privacy on unsecure networks, for up to 1GB of traffic per month on a single device (for $9.99 per month you get unlimited traffic on unlimited devices). The free security suite integrates VPN protection. In the Pro antivirus, you can install the VPN by going to the dashboard.
See How We Test Security Software
Less Effective Web Protection
One of the bonuses you get for upgrading to Avira Antivirus Pro is Web Protection. Where the Browser Safety extension only works in supported browsers, Web Protection acts at the network level, aiming to keep all web-connected programs from hooking up with dangerous URLs.
For a comparison of the two features, I ran my malicious URL blocking test again, using the very latest reported malware-hosting URLs. In one virtual machine, I ran the test on Chrome with Browser Safety installed; in another, I used Internet Explorer with no browser extension, just Web Protection.
I got through 60 functional real-world malware-hosting URLs without seeing a single sign of life from Web Protection. It did show some action during the remainder of the test, but overall, it missed 70 percent of the dangerous URLs caught by Browser Safety. Avira’s total score in both tests was lower than what I previously recorded, so I let the earlier measurement stand.
I started to repeat my antiphishing test, comparing the results of Web Protection in Internet Explorer with my already-recorded results using Browser Safety in Chrome. When I reached a dozen phishing URLs caught by Browser Safety but missed by Web Protection, I dropped the laborious test.
I’ve said this before. I don’t understand why Avira doesn’t take the clearly superior detection technology in Browser Safety and apply it to Web Protection. As it is, if you use a browser other than Chrome, Edge, Opera, or Firefox, you get no protection in the free edition and comparatively limited protection in Pro.
Ransomware Protection
New with the previous edition, Avira offers a ransomware protection component, designed to eliminate any ransomware that might get past the ordinary real-time protection. To test this component, I turned off real-time protection, verified that ransomware protection remained enabled, and launched a dozen real-world ransomware samples, one at a time, in a virtual machine cut off from the internet.
Two of the samples took no action, perhaps detecting that they were under observation. All the rest ran to completion. The nasty Petya ransomware encrypted the entire (virtual) disk. My single screen-locker sample successfully locked the screen. And the remaining samples encrypted my test files without a peep from Antivirus Pro. After this dismal performance against real ransomware, I didn’t bother testing with the simulated attacks generated by the RanSim ransomware simulator from KnowBe4.
It turns out that I was fooled by the display, just as I was the last time I reviewed this product. Despite Avira’s status page clearly showing ransomware protection active, it was not. When you turn off real-time protection you’re also turning off ransomware protection, even though the display says it’s on. That’s a user interface element that could use some work. I’ll look for improvement when the next version hits the shelves.
Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security couples ransomware protection with overall real-time protection in the same way, though it doesn’t send the same kind of mixed message. As with Trend Micro, I couldn’t truly test Avira’s ransomware-specific abilities, because the regular antivirus wiped out all the samples.
Other Pro Features
The Pro edition adds Mail Protection, which I thought might be a spam filter. It isn’t. Rather, it scans incoming POP3 and IMAP email for malware. You can optionally set it to scan outgoing SMTP messages, though I can’t picture how a malicious file could escape the real-time antivirus and then get caught by Mail Protection. Given that an incoming malicious attachment would get scanned by the real-time antivirus before it could launch, I’m not sure how much this feature adds.
Most malware attacks come over the Internet, but there are a few malware families that spread using infected USB devices. Some high-end security suites include device control, a business-centered feature that lets an administrator ban the use of unknown USB drives, but allow specific approved USBs. This feature works well in G Data Total Security and TrustPort Total Protection.
Avira’s Pro-only Device Protection doesn’t give you full USB control. Critically, there’s no option to block all devices except those marked as trusted. When you insert a USB drive, it simply asks whether to allow or block access, with a checkbox to remember the device and whitelist or blacklist it. There’s no obvious access to configuration for this feature. It appears nowhere on the main window, or in that window’s menu. But if you click to configure PC Protection in the Settings dialog, you’ll find a page for Device Protection that lets you turn the feature on and off and displays the whitelist and blacklist of known devices. Note that Device Protection is off by default, so if you don’t dig into settings and enable it, you’ll never see it.
Hoping to find a way to prevent unauthorized users from allowing access for an unknown device, I enabled password protection for the product’s configuration. However, password protection doesn’t extend to the Allow/Block popup that appears for unknown USB devices. I had no trouble whitelisting an unknown, which defeats the purpose of this feature. If your aim is to keep kids (or employees) from plugging in random, possibly infected USB drives, this feature won’t help.
Doesn’t Add Enough
Avira Antivirus Pro provides good protection against malware, but all its best features also come in Avira Free Security. Pro-only Web Protection does extend antiphishing and malicious URL blocking to all browsers, but it’s vastly less accurate than the Browser Safety extension. And while Device Control aims to let an administrator prevent unauthorized users from mounting unknown USB drives, there’s no way to lock it down so they can’t. As for Ransomware Protection, I couldn’t test it, because it’s tied to real-time protection, which eliminated all the ransomware samples.
If you like Avira and want to use it in a noncommercial setting, stick with the free suite. If you need antivirus for your business, pay a little less and choose one of our for-pay antivirus Editors’ Choice products. Specifically, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Norton AntiVirus Plus, and Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus cost less, while McAfee AntiVirus Plus seems to cost the same as Avira, but allows you unlimited installations.
Avira Antivirus Pro Specs
| On-Demand Malware Scan | Yes |
| On-Access Malware Scan | Yes |
| Website Rating | No |
| Malicious URL Blocking | Yes |
| Phishing Protection | Yes |
| Behavior-Based Detection | Yes |
| Vulnerability Scan | No |
| Firewall | No |
