What are the best antivirus app for Android phones

There are a wide range of options available to suit both your budget and the level of protection you require. In addition to superior malware detection and prevention, the best Android antivirus apps also include privacy protection and anti-theft features. 

While most of these apps have a free service tier that allows you to test them before paying an annual subscription, some are completely free.

Some of the best Android antivirus apps on this list will back up your contacts and other important data, track your phone or tablet using GPS, take a picture of a phone thief using your device's camera, and even let you use your Wear OS smartwatch to find your phone.

We rounded up the best deals from the biggest names in mobile antivirus — Avast, Bitdefender, Lookout, McAfee, Norton, and even Google itself — and rated their Android apps based on settings, interface, usability, other features, and of course. , their ability to protect your device from the latest cyber threats.

To determine the level of protection offered by each app, we used data from independent German testing lab AV-Test, which rates most major security apps on their ability to detect malware and other threats. We also used Geekbench 5 to measure the impact of each of these apps on overall Android performance.

What are the best antivirus apps for Android

Based on our tests, the best antivirus app for Android today is Bitdefender Mobile Security ($15 per year), which offers near-perfect malware protection and a wide range of features.

While Norton Mobile Security (starting at $15 per year) offers even better protection, Norton has discontinued the excellent free tier of Norton Mobile Security and its anti-theft features, so you'll have to pay something to protect your devices.

Both Avast Mobile Security and McAfee Mobile Security offer a lot of features for free and perform fairly well in malware detection tests. However, Avast's anti-theft and call blocking tools didn't work well, and the free versions of both apps show a lot of ads.

Lookout Security & Antivirus was one of the first mobile antivirus apps and has a compelling identity protection option. Still, there's little data from third-party lab tests about Lookout Antivirus's effectiveness, so we don't really know exactly how well it protects against malware.

Bitdefender's Android security app has near-perfect malware protection, very little impact on performance, Android Wear watch integration, a VPN client, and malicious website blocking that works with most Android browsers.

To determine the level of protection offered by each app, we used data from independent German testing lab AV-Test, which rates most major security apps on their ability to detect malware and other threats. We also used Geekbench 5 to measure the impact of each of these apps on overall Android performance.