Antivirus Solutions have undoubtedly become one of the most crucial utilities in the market. Avast & AVG are among the most prominent names in the computer security industry. Both the programs are best-known for their abilities to safeguard user’s systems from malicious content that gets induced from the Internet.
Although both the Internet Security Tools have a lot of things in common, they still offer some unique functionalities that make them best-in-class choices to protect devices from viruses and other threats. This page reveals a brief comparison between the two popular antivirus programs and helps you decide which one is worth your investment.
Avast VS AVG AntiVirus : Best Antivirus Software
The article Avast VS AVG is compared on multiple aspects of the services, including Features, Protection, User-Friendliness, Performance, Pricing, and Support. Followed by a brief set of Pros & Cons both utilities have to offer so that you can make the right decision while choosing the Best Antivirus Software between the two.
1. Features
Who Wins The Battle?
Compared to AVG AntiVirus, Avast offers a comprehensive set of features as part of their premium suite.
A good antivirus offers much more than just great protection against malware and viruses. It comes with a huge set of advanced functionalities that enhances your security to the next level. Let’s see what features come packed with Avast & AVG Antivirus solutions.
Starting with Avast, its Freeware utility offers cursory protection and doesn’t have tons of advanced features. Talking about their Internet Security, Premier & Ultimate offerings, the paid versions have multiple functionalities and tools, which provide comprehensive protection against all kinds of malicious content.
The features for Internet Security, Premier & Ultimate versions include:
| Highlights: | Avast Antivirus |
|---|---|
| Firewall | Monitor network traffic & resolve potential security loopholes. |
| Ransomware Shield | Safeguards your private and sensitive data, to avoid common data breaches. |
| Password Manager & Protector | Stores & manages all your credentials in a secure vault to avoid unauthorized access |
| Anti-Spam | Keep your email clients free from junk and phishing attachments & contents. |
| Webcam Shield | Provide ultimate security against webcam spyware. |
| Shredder | Permanently delete confidential data, making it unrecoverable. |
| Wi-Fi Inspector | Monitors and protects against common Home & Public network vulnerabilities. |
| Real Site | Provides great protection against fake and suspicious websites & links. |
| DNS Web Protection | To block phishing content and potentially dangerous files that can spread infections. |
| Sandbox | Allows you to open problematic files & documents in safe mode to prevent further infections against hidden threats. |
| Secure VPN | Ensures safest browsing experience by giving anonymity. |
| Password Premium | Sends alerts, if the password or any other private data is leaked through any website. |
| Clean-Up Tool | Finds and removes junk files and other residues to speed up performance. |
Talking about AVG, the product offers a Freemium solution, with the name AVG AntiVirus Free. The software offers multiple protection against different kinds of threats, malicious links and downloads. The company also offers a mid-level premium offering with the name AVG Internet Security and the highest, full-blown tier AVG Ultimate, which you can run on your Windows, Mac, and Android devices.
The features for Internet Security & Ultimate versions include:
| Highlights: | AVG AntiVirus |
|---|---|
| Two-Way Firewall | Enhanced protection to block hackers’ access to your system using AI-aided threat detection and the capability to remove them. |
| Online Safety | Securely block unsafe links, downloads, and email attachments. |
| File Encryption | To secure your important data against Ransomware and other online threats. |
| File Shredder | Permanently delete confidential data, making it unrecoverable. |
| Webcam Protection | Provide ultimate security against webcam spyware. |
| Payments Protection | Safeguard users from fake & suspicious websites during online shopping, so that no financial data gets lost, during payments. |
| Performance TuneUp | Thoroughly cleans junk files, caches, cookies, history, and more to improve battery life and fix performance issues. |
| Single Hub Management | Capability to secure and tune-up all your systems from a single dashboard. |
| High Compatibility | Includes app management for both Mac and Android devices. |
| Support For Unlimited Devices | Covers protection for all your devices: Windows, Macs & Smartphones. |
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Round 1 – Features Point For: Avast Antivirus When we take a closer look at the Features set of both the antivirus solutions, we observe that Avast simply offers more. Be it Sandbox or DNS Web Protection, both the major functionalities are missing for AVG users.
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Must-Read: How To Disable Avast Antivirus?
2. Malware Protection
Who Wins The Battle?
Tie. During our tests, we found both Avast and AVG AntiVirus to protect systems against all sorts of malware infections.
A feature-rich antivirus solution might have lots of flashy things to offer but it will still be considered a mediocre choice if it fails to offer a robust malware defense against common and new types of security threats. Let’s see how well both Avast VS AVG AntiVirus performs in this round of Malware Protection.
With that in mind, we are sharing independent protection reports from unaffiliated security testing labs to see what Avast & AVG Antivirus has to offer to its users.
Avast Antivirus:
During AV-Test’s November-December 2020 test, Avast did extremely well, with a perfect score of 6 out of 6 for Protection and 5.5 out of 6 for Performance. Avast was even recorded in AV Comparatives’ July-October, 2020 Protection Test, with 756 out of 758 test samples blocked by Avast during the tests.
The overall protection success rate of 99.7% was matched by AVG and Kaspersky during the test, and it was certainly enough for the AV-Comparatives Lab to award Avast with ‘Advanced Award’ for excellent protection. On the other hand, Avast’s business-level protection lost the opportunity in Q2 2019 Protection testing, with a poor score of just four percent of the 398 samples missed.
AVG Antivirus:
Matching Avast’s great protection score during AV-Test’s November-December 2020 test, AVG AntiVirus also received a perfect score of 6 out of 6 in the Protection round and 5.5 out of 6 in the Performance testing. During AV-Comparatives’ July-October, 2020 Protection Test, AVG stopped 756 malware samples out of 758, with an overall success rate of 99.7 percent.
In Q2 2019 malware testing, AVG wasn’t tested at all. So, we’ll skip this lab report for AVG.
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Round 2 – Malware Protection Point For: Tie According to the AV-Test’s recent assessments, conducted in December 2020, both AVG & Avast succeeded to receive the ‘Top Product’ badge and both the utilities’ performance was highly satisfactory.
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Must-Read: How to Fix Avast Not Opening on Windows 10?
3. User-Friendliness
Who Wins The Battle?
Both the security solutions have intuitive dashboards and straightforward processes to scan systems.
Talking about the dashboard and user interface, great software is the one that incorporates (A) User-friendliness (B) Efficiency. Any interface that lacks any of these qualities is bound to make a bad first impression on its users. Let’s take a look at whether Avast and AVG possess both potentials.
Avast displays a dark grey color theme and bright contrasting accent color for its modules and easy-to-navigate buttons. The dashboard looks quite straightforward and suitable for novice users as well. On the left panel, you can explore all the access buttons for using protection, privacy, and performance features. These modules would further be expanded to show you more tasks and operations that can be accomplished.
Talking about AVG utilities, the interface comes with a striking design and a great color combination of Black, Dark Grey, Green & White, making every module and feature look prominent. On the main dashboard, you can find dedicated sections for multiple purposes to access complete system protection, along with Web & Email and other privacy protection features.
If you want to quickly scan your computer with AVG, you can find six preset options, ranging from quick scan to boot scans to detect common threats and heavy malware infections, respectively. These scanning modes can be accessed by clicking the ‘gear icon’ next to the Scan Computer button on the main dashboard.
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Round 3 – User-Friendliness Point For: Tie Both Avast & AVG, follow the best standards in the industry when it comes to providing great user-friendliness and efficiency. Bothe Avast & AVG Antivirus can be easily installed, and they offer a high range of tools for customization.
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Must-Read: Windows Defender VS Avast: Which One Is Better for You
4. Performance
Who Wins The Battle?
Avast Antivirus is slightly better than AVG antivirus when it comes to providing smoother performance and faster scanning.
Your device should not lag if you have a security solution installed. These utilities aren’t only designed to detect and remove suspicious files and threats that could hamper performance. A good antivirus is one, which is lightweight and offers great optimization modules to maintain stability and ensure peak productivity.
Avast
Well, it is an unobtrusive platform, which doesn’t consume much system resources and shows relatively more high-performance than its major counterparts. In the aforementioned performance tests performed by AV-Test & AV-Comparatives, both the security showed cut-throat performance in the category.
AVG
Similar to Avast Antivirus, AVG did score well when it comes to achieving a high-performance rating in multiple test labs. But you may experience slower software installation and slower web access, which is certainly negligible but gives Avast a slight edge in the round of Performance.
To further determine whether the system performance was impacted by running the antivirus software, we did the following activities on the computer, while the security software was running in the background.
- File transferring
- Archiving/Unarchiving files
- Installation & Uninstallation of software
- Launching and closing applications
- Downloading files from the Internet
- Surfing the web
Here’s what we found out after testing Avast & AVG respectively in the same scenario:
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Round 4 – Performance Point For: Avast Antivirus Results are quite the same again. AVG impacted the system performance a little bit during the first run, while a user was transferring/copying files and launching applications like Adobe Acrobat Reader, MS Word, PowerPoint, giving Avast Antivirus an extra point in the round.
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5. Pricing
Who Wins The Battle?
AVG AntiVirus offers bang for your buck. You can certainly protect more devices with less investment than Avast.
Since most of the premium antivirus solutions charge an upfront annual fee, you want to make sure that you are investing yourself into a product that’s worth the cost (for a year on longer). Let’s take a look at the pricing models of Avast VS AVG Antivirus so that we can judge their value for money.
Avast offers three product plans currently, apart from the Free Antivirus plan which provides standard tools for basic protection.
AVG’s plan was quite similar to Avast’s security suites, including their Free plan for novice users. They even run a dedicated Antivirus product specifically for Mac users, available with fewer functionalities.
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Round 5 – Pricing Point For: AVG AntiVirus With simple price structuring for Free & Two Premium plans (with an extra free security utility for Mac users), AVG wins a point in this round of Pricing. Their models are pretty generous for offering a great number of device coverage in a sweet deal.
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6. Help & Support
Who Wins The Battle?
With 24*7 Phone Support & Live Chat available, both Avast & AVG AntiVirus have great support for customers. So, no clear winner, equal points for both.
Last but not the least, the final round will be conducted based on Customer Support measures offered by both Avast and AVG Antivirus solutions.
Avast
For premium customers and the ones using (Free 30-Day Premium Trial Version) will receive direct support which involves a Ticketing system & support line available for 24*7. Additionally, the company also offers a Knowledge Base section on the site itself, covering basic How-To articles and Troubleshooting issues. There are even tons of customer forums with Millions of posts in multiple languages to ask and receive support from Avast Staff.
AVG
AVG offers extensive support for their customer base, including Live Chat, Email Ticketing System and for detailed troubleshooting queries, customers can contact the company through 24*7 phone support lines (For UK, US & Australia). Additionally, FAQs are also available on the site along with tons of support guides for individual products. Similar to Avast, you will also find a plethora of Support Forums, which are highly reliable for resolving common issues with the security product.
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Round 6 – Help & Support Point For: Tie With Live Chat options and 24*7 phone support, the round becomes Draw for both Avast VS AVG Antivirus (Help & Support).
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PROS & CONS: Avast Antivirus VS AVG AntiVirus
Discussing the advantages & disadvantages of Avast Antivirus:
Pros
- Includes tons of extra flashy features.
- Highly compatible with multiple OSs.
- It performs well in independent test results.
- Easy to download, use and navigate throughout.
- Great & free protection for Android users.
- Exceptional user reviews
Cons
- No multilayer subscription models.
- No VPN is included in the antivirus package.
- Has been known to leak user data in the past.
Video Tutorial – Avast Antivirus Review: Plans, Features, Security Level, Compatibility & Customer Support
Discussing the advantages & disadvantages of AVG AntiVirus:
Pros
- Well organized & easy to use software.
- Supports multiple operating systems.
- Protections are rated slightly higher than Avast Antivirus.
- Several unique features for great protection.
- Dedicated VPN service, Optimization & ID Theft products available.
- Real-time constant updates take the load off IT Admin duties
Cons
- VPN service is only available with the premium package.
- No tool for Parental Controls.
Video Tutorial – AVG Antivirus Review: Plans, Features, Security Level, Compatibility & Customer Support
Final Thoughts: Avast Antivirus VS AVG AntiVirus
In several ways, Avast Antivirus & AVG AntiVirus is a similar product, with rebranded functionalities and support methods available for both the security utilities. No wonder the comparison ends in a dead heat. However, Avast comes with few extra features and better performance wins the battle of this Avast VS AVG Match-up!
EDITOR’S CHOICE: Best Antivirus For 2023Though both the security software offers their own set of features, pros, and cons. But if you are looking for a better alternative that performs well, has an easy-to-use interface, and provides strong protection against new and existing security threats, choose none other than Systweak Antivirus. With a unique combination of advanced functionalities like Real-Time Protection, Exploit & Malware Protection, Regular updates, Performance Optimization, USB Protection, Cleaning Malicious Startup Items, Safe Web Browsing Experience, 24*7 Technical Support & more. Systweak Antivirus is an award-winning security solution and has earned VB100 Virus Certification.
To know about Systweak Antivirus in detail, check out the complete review here! |
Frequently Asked Questions: Avast VS AVG AntiVirus
Q1. Which is better, Avast or AVG?
Avast is certainly a better antivirus solution in comparison to AVG AntiVirus. Avast comes with few extra features and better performance wins the battle of this Avast VS AVG Match-up!
Q2. Can I run AVG and Avast together?
Well, if you are running two antivirus utilities running together, they may detect each other in background processes and cancel each other out. Similarly, when you run both the security utilities at the same time, chances are they conflict with each other and hamper overall performance.
Q3. Is Avast Free Good Enough?
Avast Free undoubtedly offers excellent antivirus protection and offers competing capabilities in comparison to other antiviruses, when it comes to adding a network security scanner, browser protection, and so on.
Q4. What is the best free antivirus ?
There are tons of free antivirus software available in the market. However, when we talk about the best, you can choose Avast Free Antivirus, AVG AntiVirus, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition, Sophos Home Free, and so on. You can check out our complete list of Best Paid & Free Antivirus Software here!
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