AVG Internet Security review: Reliable, budget-friendly antivirus software

AVG is best known for its excellent free antivirus software—so why pay a premium for the AVG Internet Security suite? In a word: convenience.

With security software, the more you pay, the more comprehensive your protection becomes. That can be valuable if you find keeping up with online threats too overwhelming or time consuming. There’s something to be said for a program that can handle the major elements for you. And that’s what AVG Internet Security, the company’s entry-level version of its paid antivirus software, provides.

By moving up to a paid subscription, you get additional features that keep you safer during your off days. No antivirus program is bulletproof, of course, but this one hits the major points while not overloading you with extras you won’t use. Whether it’s right for you depends on how much you prioritize simplicity.

Note: This review is part of our best antivirus roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them. Our March 2025 update reflects our re-evaluation of the software, based on the refreshes made by the company in the past year.

How much does AVG Internet Security cost?

First, the basics—let’s talk about cost. If purchased directly from AVG, jumping from the free plan to the company’s Internet Security package is cheaper for the first year, and then reverts to the full price thereafter.

Single-device plan (1 PC)

• $47 for the first year
• $78 per year thereafter

10-device plan (multiple devices)

• $60 for the first year
• $100 per year thereafter

AVG doesn’t offer family plans, but if you purchase a multi-device plan (which supports PC, Mac, Android, and iOS), you can share the device quota with family members. Even if you’re flying solo, the extra cash for multi-device coverage can be worth it—these days it’s common to own at least a computer and phone, and often a tablet as well.

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Compared to the competition, AVG prioritizes more devices rather than extra features. Take for example Norton—its closest equivalent plan includes VPN access, but you can only use it across five devices. Also surprising: Avast, which actually owns AVG, charges more for a similar plan and fewer covered devices.

For more savings, you can buy a license for AVG Internet Security through retailers like Newegg, which offer multi-year plans as well as ones with fewer devices—so you can get a subscription appropriately sized for your situation, if you prefer.

What does AVG Internet Security include?

AVG Internet Security adds five more features to the free plan’s antivirus, firewall, web and email threat, and network protection. You get safeguards for the passwords saved to your browsers; webcam takeovers; unknown access to files with sensitive data; malicious redirects for websites you’re trying to visit (aka DNS hijacking); and attacks conducted through Windows’ remote desktop protocol.

This particular plan does not include access to a VPN. (You’ll need an Ultimate subscription, or subscribe to AVG Secure VPN separately.) AVG also doesn’t have its own password manager or parental controls, so you can’t get those by changing your subscription.

Key features of AVG Internet Security

Installation and user interface

To install AVG Internet Security, either download the free version and then upgrade, or first buy the paid subscription and install afterward.

AVG’s dashboard is clean and logical, though potentially gloomy to those who prefer light-themed apps. The nearly black background is punctuated with bright green text to cue you in to important information. Both your PC’s status and key features are clearly highlighted in the dashboard.

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Starting a scan from the dashboard is easy—for a quick scan, you press the Run Smart Scan button toward the bottom of the screen, which will initially inspect your operating system, hunt for malware, look for advanced issues, and check for performance issues. Subsequent smart scans will focus on just the first three.

You can choose a different type of scan by clicking the text that says Run other scans. Your options are deep scan, file or folder scan, boot-time scan, USB/DVD scan, and a performance scan. Using the performance scan requires a separate subscription to AVG TuneUp, or a further upgrade to an AVG Ultimate plan.

Above the scan options are the dashboard tiles. You’ll find four tiles related to the software’s features—Computer, Web & Email, Hacker Attacks, and Personal Data. Click on any of these buttons, and you’ll see explanations for each software component. You can also broadly customize your settings, either by toggling off a feature or fiddling with the defaults. For the best protection, most people should leave everything on and then further add items for protection where applicable.

Also making a return is a fifth Store tile, which lets you buy the upgrades that AVG will push you toward, like when offering performance scan results. You can’t hide this tile in the settings, which is unfortunate.

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However, if you run into conflicts or annoyances that require a little fine-tuning, AVG does provide more granular control. To access, you’ll click on the Menu hamburger icon at the top right, then choose Settings. This drop-down menu gives access to features like the data shredder, subscription info, browser extensions, and support as well.

These detailed settings are a boon for software nerds, incidentally—particularly those of us who serve as tech support for loved ones. You can tweak a fair number of things, including privacy settings (you can opt out from data sharing right from the app—and I recommend you do, especially the third-party sharing). You can even create a password to keep others from changing settings.

The only real issue with AVG’s app is the continued upsells for its other products. Paying for AVG reduces the flow, but doesn’t stop it all together.

Virus, malware, and threat protection

Real-time protection

AVG Internet Security protects your PC against real-time threats in multiple ways. On your PC, the software scans files you add or open, checks apps for unusual behavior, and controls access to select folders often targeted by ransomware. Ransomware protection is customizable, so you can add more folders to the default list. Email downloaded to your PC is screened for dangerous attachments and malicious links, too.

When you’re on the web, AVG Internet Security scans the data transmitted to your computer for malware and for any sneaky DNS redirections to fake websites. It also monitors traffic going to and from apps, and locks down the passwords saved to your browsers. You get protection from remote access attacks, too—AVG blocks remote connection attempts from unknown sources, and it restricts access to your webcam and microphone.

As a small protection against being caught unawares from data breaches, AVG Internet Security keeps tabs on your email address. If it’s spotted in a leak, you’ll get a notification in the app. To monitor more email addresses than just the one tied to your account, you’ll have to…(as you might have already guessed)…upgrade to AVG’s BreachGuard service.

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Scheduled and manual scans

For 2025, AVG’s defaults have changed. No scans are scheduled by default—you’ll have to create your own automatic intervals of a quick scan or deep scan. (My suggestion: At least once a month, if not weekly.) You can adjust the timing and depth of scan, and create multiple scheduled ones. You have three types to choose from: Deep Scan, File or Folder Scan, and Quick Scan.

Each type of scan is customizable in settings—for example, Deep Scan normally scans for files that are vulnerable to malware, and only for common installation apps. But you can make it dig further and have it scan all files, if you like. You can also change how the program handles infected files.

Additional features

AVG Secure Browser

At installation, AVG asks if you’d like to install its secure browser alongside the app. Opting in gives access to what’s basically a version of Chrome, but more optimized for privacy and security. AVG touts automatic ad blocking, antivirus and VPN integration (Windows only), protection against malware and shady website, stronger privacy, and blocking of tracking cookies as top features.

Note: For VPN access, you must have an AVG plan that includes it…which AVG Internet Security does not.

I wasn’t impressed with the out-of-the-box experience with this so-called secured browser. The one thing it has going for it is a pared down version of a browser add-on store—which makes it harder to accidentally download malicious extensions.

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But otherwise, the browser doesn’t fully live up to its marketing. Example: For ad-blocking, you have to manually turn on the pre-installed Privacy Guard extension. The screening also didn’t catch all the ads on the sites I visited—and the browser loaded sites slowly. (It did however seem to block YouTube ads.) Also, you’re automatically opted in to share your usage with AVG, and the company pre-installs its own coupon extension.

My recommendation: If you want a browser that better lives up to AVG’s promises, skip on over to Brave as a better alternative. (While it does automatically track some browser usage, it better explains the nature of the data collected—and I’m more onboard with their approach overall.) Brave has extra quality-of-life features tucked in, too. You will have to still be careful when downloading browser extensions, since it’s the full store available, though.

(Wondering what happened to AVG’s Online Security brower extension? It’s still around, and it’s actually free to anyone. But it seemed broken for me on Edge—I didn’t see any of the visual badges that let me know what search engine results in Google and Bing were safe to click on. In Chrome, the visual badges no longer show up for Bing. I don’t recommend its use.)

Data shredder

Formerly known as File Shredder, this feature lets you securely delete files, folders, or whole drives by overwriting them with other data. On the face of it, this sounds like a good feature—and it can be, if you want to clear data from a hard disk drive (HDD). 

However, most modern computers have solid state drives (SSD), which save data in a different way than mechanical drives. At best, you won’t actually securely overwrite the data using this method, and at worst, you can shorten the life of your SSD. (You’ll want to use this method instead.)

Customer support

Aside from AVG’s support pages and forums, you can contact technical support through an online chat or through a phone call. The support pages are best for quick overviews and/or walkthroughs of various features, while the forums can help with troubleshooting—provided you’re willing to dig through several threads.

Updates and maintenance 

Updates for both virus definitions and the app itself run automatically in the background, though you can change these to only remind you when an update is available or go full manual (which I don’t advise). If you want to manually trigger the update yourself, there’s also a button to check for updates. You can find this by heading to Settings > General > Update.

Performance

AVG generally gets extremely high marks for antivirus and malware protection from leading organizations that evaluate security software. In AV-Test’s zero-day attack and malware tests for January and February 2025 (the most current results released), AVG Internet Security detected 100 percent of the threats. When faced with 401 zero-day attack samples (including web and email threats) and 15,629 samples of recently widespread and prevalent malware, AVG blocked them all.

AV-Comparatives

Similarly, in AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for July through October 2024, AVG’s antivirus engine caught 99.6 percent of the 471 test cases, with 16 false positives. That means if your PC encounters malicious web addresses, exploits (like drive-by downloads), or URLs that link directly to malware while on the web, AVG should do an excellent job of noticing and keeping you from harm. AVG also hit high marks in AV-Comparatives’ September 2024 malware protection test, scoring a 94.3 percent offline detection rate, 95.8 percent online detection rate, and 99.92 percent online protection rate, with four false positives.

AVG falters a little when dealing with more sophisticated, targeted threats, like malicious scripts and fileless attacks. It caught 12 of the 15 test cases in AV-Comparatives’ October 2024 Advanced Threat Protection Test. However, AVG did detect samples missed by higher performing rivals.

AV-Comparatives

During my hardware performance tests on a modest Acer Aspire 3 laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, a 128GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and Windows 11 Home, AVG had a minimal to low effect on system resources when left idle in the background, with the real-time scanner active.

I saw virtually no change in benchmark results during most typical tasks performed on a PC, as simulated by PCMark 10—e.g., video chatting, web browsing, gaming, image and document editing in free apps like GIMP and LibreOffice. Surprisingly, that held true for our Handbreak encoding test, too, which can be quite punishing. The only notable effect popped up when running Microsoft Office apps (as simulated by UL Procyon), with about a 6.5 percent decrease.

Running a deep scan caused more of a hit, with about a 6 percent dip in PCMark 10. Handbrake encodes took about 4 percent more time. Procyon was again the most affected, with an almost 20 percent drop. The takeaway here? If you’re on a cheaper PC and slinging larger data sets in Excel, you’re best served scheduling your system scans for off-hours.

As for features, Sensitive Data Shield (which lets you scan your system for files containing high-risk pieces of personal information) was a bit hit or miss. For example, one invoice was flagged, but not another similar document that lacked the word “invoice.”

Other protections aren’t actually accessible with the Internet Security plan—though the interface is designed to make you think it is until the very last moment. E.g.: Running a Performance Scan will display action items. But if you click on the button to resolve them all, you get a screen asking you to pay for AVG TuneUp, as shown above.

The fact that this upselling is baked into a paid subscription is off-putting—it makes the app feel incomplete, even though you’ve got a subscription already.

Should you get AVG Internet Security?

AVG Internet Security is a fantastic option for people seeking to be more hands-off with online security without paying a ton for the convenience. In fact, it’s solid enough to still earn a recommendation despite how strong the free version is on its own. (And despite the continued upsells, which are annoying to see in a paid product.) It offers great performance and an easy-to-understand interface along with several helpful security features.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service.