Malwarebytes Review 2025: Is It Good Enough?

Malwarebytes is a minimalistic, easy-to-use antivirus program that provides good protection against malware, but it doesn’t have a lot of the important protections that the best antiviruses of 2025 include in their plans.

During my testing, Malwarebytes detected 95% of the malware files I had previously downloaded to my device, which is a pretty good result. In terms of real-time protection, it successfully blocked 98% of the malware files, which is also excellent.

Malwarebytes also offers a couple of additional features. I really like Browser Guard, a free web security browser extension that blocks trackers, pop-up ads, phishing sites, and exploit attacks. You also get a secure VPN if you upgrade to the Malwarebytes Plus plan. It’s a decent option for hiding online activity, but it’s missing many features and functionalities found in standalone VPN competitors.

Malwarebytes offers identity theft protection, too, which is great — this service includes dark web monitoring, identity theft insurance, social media monitoring, credit monitoring (US customers only), and more.

Unfortunately, Malwarebytes lacks some features that are nice to have in a premium antivirus, such as device optimization tools, a firewall, and parental controls — but it’s a decent choice for users who want a simple antivirus without a lot of extras.

While not as good as top competitors like Norton and Bitdefender, Malwarebytes is affordable, offers a 14-day free trial, and provides a generous 60-day money-back guarantee on all premium plans.

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Malwarebytes Full Review — Core Security Tools in a Simple Package

Malwarebytes has all of the core security features of an antivirus program, including real-time malware protection, ransomware protection, and web protection, and it also offers identity theft protection. But it has fewer additional features than its top competitors — for example, it lacks system tuneup tools and parental controls.

Malwarebytes’s top plans include a VPN, but competing brands like Norton and TotalAV offer better VPNs and a wider range of extra tools.

However, Malwarebytes is still an excellent low-cost option if you’re looking for a basic, no-frills antivirus that offers good malware protection.

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Malwarebytes Plans & Pricing — Low-Cost Plans Covering up to 20 Users

Malwarebytes offers 1 free plan and several paid plans. Annoyingly, the paid plans have different names on Malwarebytes’s landing pages, but when you checkout, you’ll always be buying one of the following:

• Standard.
• Plus.
• Ultimate.

Malwarebytes also offers 2 family plans. These plans are the same as the Standard and Ultimate plans listed above but cover more devices at a lower price. Finally, you can choose 3 different tiers of identity theft protection:

• Identity Essential.
• Identity Advanced.
• Identity Ultimate.

These plans include the premium antivirus software, Browser Guard, and Privacy VPN, with tiered levels of ID theft protection.

Additionally, Malwarebytes offers 3 plans for teams. These plans are fairly basic, with real-time protection and Browser Guard:

• Small Office.
• Boutique Business.
• Sole Proprietor.

All of Malwarebytes’s paid plans include a risk-free 60-day money-back guarantee (the same as Norton). This is pretty generous compared to most competitors, which usually only offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. There’s also a 14-day free trial of Malwarebytes Standard for Windows and a separate 7-day free trial of Privacy VPN (unlike the Malwarebytes Standard trial, it requires a credit card).

Here’s a quick overview of all of Malwarebytes’s plans:

Malwarebytes Free — Decent Option for Virus Removal

Malwarebytes Free only includes the on-demand malware scanner and Browser Guard extension. I only recommend this plan to users looking for a quick way to remove an existing malware infection from their device.

However, if you want comprehensive protection, Malwarebytes Free isn’t good enough, as it doesn’t have real-time protection. Competitors like Avira Free include both real-time malware protection and additional features like system tuneup tools and a VPN — so if you want a free antivirus, there are better options.

That said, Malwarebytes Free comes with a 14-day free trial of Malwarebytes Standard for Windows and Mac devices and a 7-day free trial for Android and iOS devices, so you can test all of the premium features risk-free.

Malwarebytes Standard — Basic Security

Malwarebytes Standard offers malware scanning, real-time protection, and web protection. With this plan, you can cover between 1 and 20 devices (with the price varying accordingly), including Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.

The real-time protection alone is worth the upgrade to premium from the free plan. It means you get layers of added protection against online scams, phishing, ransomware, PUPs, and exploit attacks that use software bugs to hack your computer.

At $44.99 / year, Malwarebytes Standard for 3 devices is more expensive than top competitors (like Norton or Bitdefender), even though both Norton and Bitdefender have better malware detection rates, better phishing protection, and a ton of additional features.

Malwarebytes Standard isn’t as good as the best antivirus software in 2025, but it’s a decent option for users looking for a simple but effective internet security solution. Malwarebytes offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Malwarebytes Plus — Security + VPN

Malwarebytes’s top-tier antivirus plan includes all the features of its Standard plan plus a VPN. This is a good plan for users who want to combine Malwarebytes’s strong antivirus and phishing protection with a reliable VPN. The VPN has a kill switch, supports P2P file sharing, and has split-tunneling, but it doesn’t work with streaming sites or in restrictive countries. If you’re looking for a good VPN for streaming and full internet freedom, I recommend ExpressVPN.

At $59.99 / year, Malwarebytes Plus isn’t the best bargain out there: it’s more expensive than the top antivirus competitors that come with way more features. For example, Norton 360 Deluxe offers real-time malware protection, web protection, a firewall, a VPN, a password manager, identity theft protection, 50 GB of cloud storage, and more, for just $49.99 / year*. But if you’re interested in Malwarebytes, you can test the antivirus and VPN with a 60-day money-back guarantee and see whether or not it’s the right choice for you.

Malwarebytes Ultimate — Security + VPN + Identity Protection

Malwarebytes’s top-tier antivirus plan includes all the features of its Plus plan as well as Identity Ultimate (listed below) at $119.99 / year. Basically, in addition to everything above, you get:

• $2 million for identity insurance.
• Breach IQ score.
• Social media monitoring.
• Credit monitoring from all 3 major bureaus.
• Advanced dark web monitoring.

Starting at $119.99 / year, Ultimate provides comprehensive antivirus protection, online privacy, and identity protection.

Malwarebytes Security Features — Essential Protections That Work Well in 2025

Virus Scanner — Quick Scans That Block Most Malware

Malwarebytes’s virus scanner is good — it blocks most malware on Windows, Mac, and Android devices. It uses a large database containing millions of known malware threats, including trojans, worms, ransomware, spyware, and rootkits, as well as heuristic analysis to flag new malware files that haven’t yet been added to its database. Malwarebytes also employs machine learning technology capable of learning about new threats without any human input.

Malwarebytes for Windows offers 3 types of scans:

• Threat Scan. Scans key areas of your device’s system, memory, and startup programs.
• Quick Scan. Checks your memory and startup programs for active infections.
• Custom Scan. Lets you pick any file or folder you want to scan (including the entire disk).

Note that Malwarebytes doesn’t have a default full system scan option, so if you want to check your entire system for malware, you need to use the custom scan and select your C: drive from the available options (which is a little annoying!).

During my tests, the Threat Scan was fast — it took 1 minute and 33 seconds to scan over 260,000 files on my device. This is on par with competitors’ quick scans, which usually take anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes.

Before installing Malwarebytes on my Windows device, I downloaded around 1,000 malicious files (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) to my test PC. I ran the Malwarebytes Threat Scan, and it found around 76% of the files. The custom scan of my C:/ drive took around 3 hours and detected 95% of malware. This is good, but competitors like Norton and Bitdefender have a perfect 100% malware detection rate.

You can easily review and save the scan results — if you want to know more about individual detections, just click on them, and Malwarebytes will take you to a webpage explaining that kind of malware. This can help you identify false positives so you don’t accidentally remove them.

Overall, Malwarebytes has a decent detection rate of around 95%. The Threat Scan is also a good option for users who want to quickly check their files for malware, and I found it easy to select whether to scan a single folder or my entire disk with the Custom Scan option.

Real-Time Protection — Great Protections Against Malicious Threats + Helpful Extras

Malwarebytes provides real-time protection in a few different ways. If you subscribe to one of the paid plans, you’ll get access to a handful of distinct layers of protection:

• Malware and potentially unwanted program (PUP) protection.
• Web protection.
• Ransomware protection (PC only).
• Exploit protection (PC only).
• App Block (Mac only).

Malwarebytes’s real-time malware protection performed really well in my tests, successfully blocking 98% of the malware I attempted to download to my device. This is a great result that’s comparable to most premium antiviruses.

There’s Tamper Protection for Windows devices, too, which prevents unauthorized changes to the Malwarebytes application and settings. During my tests, I simulated an attack where malware tried to disable the real-time protection. Malwarebytes blocked the attack and notified me about it. Likewise, Malwarebytes has brute force protection to stop unauthorized access to your PC through remote devices, which is cool.

I also like Malwarebytes’s web protection and exploit protection features — these tools work in the background regardless of which browser you’re using, and they can block phishing attacks as well as malicious web scripts that try to hack your computer through your browser. In my testing, the web protections blocked more phishing and exploit attacks than the built-in protections in Chrome or Firefox.

App Block prevents sketchy apps from running on Mac computers. It actively scans programs for suspicious activity. If an app comes from a shady developer or includes potentially dangerous components, Malwarebytes will automatically block it — even if it hasn’t been added to the malware database.

Unfortunately, Malwarebytes’s ransomware protection isn’t as good as its other real-time protections. I used a ransomware simulator to see whether or not Malwarebytes could detect and block ransomware, and Malwarebytes only blocked around two-thirds of the ransomware files on my device. When I used the same simulator on Norton and McAfee, all ransomware simulations were instantly blocked.

Overall, Malwarebytes’s real-time protection is decent. The ransomware protection needs some work, but the real-time virus protection and web protections are on par with the best antiviruses on the market.

Browser Guard — Good Ad & Tracker Blocker (It’s Free!)

Malwarebytes’s Browser Guard is a free browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox that does a great job blocking phishing sites and is also a decent ad-blocker. The extension protects against malware, pop-up ads, trackers, phishing scams, and PUPs.

Browser Guard is very easy to use, as all of the protections are turned on by default. However, if you’d like to turn off certain layers of protection — for example, if you know a website is safe but the extension is blocking necessary pop-ups — you can easily toggle each protection on or off.

During my testing, I visited 40 known phishing sites, and Browser Guard blocked 39 — a success rate of nearly 98%, which is great.

Malwarebytes claims Browser Guard can make your browser run 4x faster by blocking ads and other unwanted content. But while it blocked about 80% of ads on ad-heavy sites, it certainly didn’t make my browser much faster. Browser Guard also struggled to block video ads on YouTube and news sites. If you’re annoyed by these types of ads, competing brands like TotalAV and Avira have better ad blockers.

Overall, Browser Guard is good at blocking most ads and effective at detecting phishing sites.

Privacy VPN (Virtual Private Network) — Basic VPN With Decent Speeds (Not Good for Streaming)

Malwarebytes’s Plus plan comes with Malwarebytes’s Privacy VPN, which has pretty good privacy protections, including:

• Over 500 servers across 45+ countries.
• WireGuard protocol.
• Strict no-logs policy.

There’s also a kill switch on Windows and Mac. A kill switch shuts off your internet connection in case your VPN connection fails and is a really important VPN feature.

Malwarebytes Privacy VPN has decent connection speeds. To assess its speeds, I first ran a speed test without the VPN, and then I ran another test when I was connected to a local server in the US. I also tested the VPN’s speeds while connected to distant servers.

As you can see, my connection speeds were slowed down — this is to be expected with any VPN, but I was disappointed to see my download speed cut to one-fifth of its original speed. By comparison, ExpressVPN only cuts download speeds in half when connecting to servers on another continent.

I also couldn’t get Malwarebytes’s VPN to work with popular streaming sites like Netflix. If you’re looking for a good streaming VPN, I recommend  TotalAV, our favorite antivirus bundled VPN.

Malwarebytes’s VPN supports torrenting. It also includes the handy split-tunneling feature, which allows you to decide which app traffic will go through your VPN and which app traffic will bypass it, letting you avoid unnecessary slowdowns on trusted apps.

However, Malwarebytes’s VPN doesn’t work in restricted countries. If you’re looking for a good VPN for these countries, I recommend ExpressVPN.

Overall, Malwarebytes’s VPN is basic, and there are better options out there. However, if you’re only interested in hiding your online activity and staying anonymous online, Malwarebytes’s VPN is a decent option.

Identity Theft Protection — Straightforward ID Protection & Social Media Monitoring (With Extras for US Users)

Malwarebytes provides Identity Theft Protection across 3 domains — monitoring your identity, tracking your credit (US only), and providing assistance in the unfortunate event of identity theft. While some features are US-only, the main Identity Theft Protection service is available in 70+ countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, many European countries, and various Asian, Latin American, and African countries.

It actively scans the dark web and other suspicious online domains for your personal information, sending alerts if anything concerning is uncovered. It also keeps an eye on your credit for any unusual activities like new accounts being opened in your name. If identity theft does occur, Malwarebytes supports you through the process of reporting the crime, disputing fraudulent charges, and restoring your identity. It also offers lost wallet assistance and insurance coverage of up to $2 million for US users and $1 million for users living in other countries.

An interesting aspect of Malwarebytes’s Identity Theft Protection is its social media monitoring service. This feature examines your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram accounts for any unusual activity or posts that may be flagged as violent, profane, discriminatory, or indicative of cyberbullying. While the intention is to safeguard your online reputation from potential threats, it made me feel like the extent of monitoring leans slightly towards overseeing user activity, which can be a concern when it comes to personal privacy.

That said, it’s totally up to you if you want to add your accounts to be monitored in this way, and some users might find it worthwhile if they’re concerned about unauthorized activity on their accounts.

In terms of usability, Malwarebytes directly integrates its identity theft protection into the Windows application, meaning you can scan for exposed personal data for free and manage your identity theft protection.

Unfortunately, Malwarebytes’s ID protection tools aren’t included in either of the main antivirus plans. To get these features, you’ll need one of the identity protection plans (the names vary depending on whether you’re in the US or a different country). Luckily, all of the Identity Theft Protection plans are affordable and include the antivirus and VPN.

Overall, Malwarebytes offers a straightforward, tiered approach to ID protection, allowing users to choose the level of protection they require. That said, I slightly prefer Norton LifeLock’s monitoring as it’s even more comprehensive, adding extras like 401k and stock monitoring and even home title monitoring.

Malwarebytes Ease of Use & Setup — Intuitive Antivirus That’s Great for Beginners

Installing, setting up, and using Malwarebytes is very simple — it took me only a couple of minutes to download and set up the software, and I had no problems using all of the provided features.

Malwarebytes doesn’t ask for your personal information to activate the free Standard trial. Most competitors ask for your email address or even credit card number, so I like that Malwarebytes really does offer a zero-commitment free trial.

Malwarebytes’s interface is clean, simple, and easy to navigate. Choosing which scan you want to run, setting up a Custom Scan, and scheduling scans is pretty straightforward. All of the real-time protections are also turned on by default, so most users won’t need to customize anything to be fully protected. There’s a Light and Dark theme, too.

However, I was disappointed to find that the macOS app lacks crucial real-time protections like ransomware protection and exploit protection, which are both available on its Windows version. The macOS-only feature, App Block, which prevents apps from untrusted developers from running on your device, hardly makes up for the loss.

Malwarebytes didn’t noticeably slow down my computer’s performance. In fact, I barely noticed it was there at all. Some antiviruses can slow down a system’s performance, especially during full system scans, but Malwarebytes ran quietly in the background throughout all of my tests.

When you install it on Windows, Malwarebytes automatically registers in the Security Center, too. This means it takes on the role of the antivirus in charge, while the built-in Windows antivirus gets turned off. If you want to use it alongside another antivirus, you can easily change this in Malwarebytes’s Settings (but I don’t recommend doing this if you have a premium plan).

I like that Malwarebytes has a simple Play Mode on Windows devices, which hides notifications when certain apps are in full-screen mode — this is great for gaming and streaming. However, I don’t like that users need to add the apps, as competitors like Norton automatically suspend scans and notifications when an app is in full-screen mode (Norton also improves gaming performance with its excellent game booster).

There’s also Trusted Advisor, a helpful and intuitive tool that serves as a quick way to optimize your security. It gives you a security score and tells you what actions you can take to close vulnerabilities. For example, it let me know that I should add Browser Guard.

Overall, Malwarebytes is really intuitive and easy to use, it doesn’t cause system slowdown, and it even has a simple Play Mode for pausing notifications when playing games or watching movies. But its macOS app is severely limited in security features.

Malwarebytes Mobile App — Well-Designed Apps (Great for Non-Tech-Savvy Users)

Malwarebytes is available on both iOS and Android — both apps are well-designed and easy to use, but the Android app offers more functionality than the iOS app. During my tests, both worked well. I found it easy to install and use the apps, as well as access and customize all of the available settings.

The Android app has almost all of the same features as the desktop app (malware scanning, web protection, and exploit protection), but it also includes a couple of useful extras, like spyware protection and a privacy audit tool. I like this tool because it allows users to check which apps have what permissions. For example, you can view apps that can read your personal information, track your location, monitor calls, cost you money, and much, much more.

The iOS app doesn’t have as many features as the Android app, but it offers decent web protection, ad blocking, SMS filtering, and scam call blocking. While this isn’t much, I like how simple it is to use the app.

Malwarebytes also offers its Privacy VPN app for Android and iOS users — but unfortunately, all of my complaints about Privacy VPN’s desktop app hold true with its mobile app. Privacy VPN is slower than competitors, it doesn’t work with streaming sites, and it won’t enable you to browse the internet freely from anywhere.

Overall, there are better antivirus apps for both Android and iOS users — Norton is my favorite Android antivirus (includes malware protection, an app advisor, and Wi-Fi protection), and it’s also my top choice for iOS protection (comes with web protection, dark web monitoring, a VPN, and much more). But Malwarebytes is a good pick for beginner or less tech-savvy users.

Malwarebytes Customer Support — Extensive Knowledge Base, but Live Chat Can Be Frustrating

Customer support from Malwarebytes is satisfactory — it offers a helpful knowledge base, a chatbot, live chat, and support via email. However, the inclusion of phone support would be helpful. Many competing companies provide a broader set of options — for instance, TotalAV offers support through email, phone, and live chat.

That said, when I tried later on, I connected with a live chat agent. It wasn’t the best service ever — I had to answer a few questions for the chatbot and then wait in a queue for 5 minutes before I connected with the agent. Once I had connected with them, I felt like they were working from a script, and it was a lot of work to get an answer to a simple question. I ended up just giving up and leaving the chat.

Despite this, customer support emailed me later in the day to apologize and gave me a better answer. It wasn’t the exact answer I was looking for, but I appreciate that they went out of their way to follow up and try to resolve my problem.

Overall, Malwarebytes’s extensive knowledge base can answer most questions, but the chatbot is pretty basic and not that helpful, plus the live chat can be pretty frustrating. On the other hand, the email support team is very friendly and knowledgeable.

What Malwarebytes Can Do Better — It Doesn’t Include a Firewall, Optimization Tools, or Parental Controls

Though effective at stopping malware, Malwarebytes could implement some changes to earn a higher place on my list of the best antiviruses in 2025.

Browser Guard does a great job at keeping you safe online, but it could be better. It blocked the vast majority of dangerous web pages in my tests and has great customization options. However, it struggles to block ads in videos and can’t block static ads as well as the best alternatives. I’d like to see this aspect improved and Browser Guard become an all-purpose browser extension.

Similarly, the real-time protections are generally great but don’t do so well against ransomware simulations. Given the dangers posed by that type of threat, I’d like to see Malwarebytes improve its ransomware protections.

Malwarebytes is also missing a few features, namely a firewall, optimization tools, and parental controls. I’d like to see these added. The lack of a firewall is particularly disappointing given the problems with the native firewalls included with all Macs and PCs (that said, they do support a third-party tool called Binisoft Windows Firewall Control). Competitors like Bitdefender come with firewalls that are both more effective and customizable than what you get out of the box.

In short, Malwarebytes is a good antivirus suite that would benefit from the addition of a few new features and improved real-time protections.

Are Malwarebytes Premium Plans Worth the Price?

Malwarebytes provides excellent real-time malware protection, good phishing protection, and a decent VPN, all for a good value. It also offers Identity Theft Protection and insurance coverage. However, it lacks some of the features that I expect to see in a premium antivirus, like system optimization tools and a password manager.

During my tests, Malwarebytes’s antivirus scanner performed well, detecting 95% of my test malware files. While this is a very good result, competitors like Norton and Bitdefender have 100% malware detection rates. Malwarebytes’s real-time protection was better than its malware scanner, though — real-time protection blocked 98% of the malware files I tried launching, which is comparable to the top antiviruses on the market.

Malwarebytes also has a secure VPN and web protection, but the VPN doesn’t work with streaming services like Netflix, and it doesn’t work in countries with internet restrictions.

Malwarebytes is not the most full-featured internet security suite. For more feature-rich protection, I recommend Norton 360 Standard or Bitdefender Total Security. And since Malwarebytes is compatible with other antiviruses, you can always use it alongside a more feature-rich antivirus solution.

Overall, Malwarebytes is an easy-to-use, install-and-forget antivirus scanner with a decent identity theft protection offering, so it might be enough for some users. Plus, it offers a 14-day free trial and a generous 60-day money-back guarantee.

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