Avira Free Antivirus for Windows
Award-winning protection, and free forever
- Top antivirus: blocks spyware, adware, ransomware, etc.
- Real-time protection & updates
- Light and fast: doesn’t slow down your PC
Editors' rating:
Spectacular
GET FREE ANTIVIRUS ON ALL YOUR DEVICES
Award-winning technology that helps protect millions of users.
Real-time protection & repair
We protect you from billions of malware attacks annually, including against ransomware, Trojans, worms, viruses, and more. In addition to virus scans, our antivirus software includes advanced repair functionalities, fixing over 90 million files last year.
Real-time updates via the cloud
Stronger together: every secured device is as a sensor, which detects emerging, never-seen-before attacks. As soon as a new threat is identified, all our customers are immediately immunized against it, protecting millions within minutes.
Light and fast
Avira has one of the smallest footprints in the industry – with virus definition updates 2-5 lighter than most other antivirus products. Unlike many others, our protection doesn’t slow you down nor hog your system’s resources.
The best antivirus protection
With over 30 years of security experience, Avira offers superior detection, with additional web protection and repair capabilities. And as a German company, we don’t track what you do or sell your data to third parties.
Avira has more than 35 years of online security experience
From our best comments
There’s safety in numbers
internet-attached devices make up our world-wide sensor network
attacks a day are blocked on average
phishing attacks were stopped in the last 12 months alone
ransomware attempts were thwarted in the last year
What’s inside?
The latest technologies
Laptop, smartphone or tablet?
Secure all your devices with Avira
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What’s inside Avira Free Antivirus for Windows?
All the essentials to ensure your security, privacy, and performance.
All the security essentials
Whatever you use and whatever you do, keep it secure
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows protects your personal data, your software, your browsing, your searches, and even your home network.
All the privacy essentials
Be anonymous in everything you do
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows helps you browse anonymously, encrypts your web traffic, prevents companies from collecting your private data, and keeps your passwords secure and for your eyes only.
Get peak performance
Your PC running as it should
You deserve the best digital experience. Get greater speed and more memory from all your devices. All with just one click.
System Requirements
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows: Free antivirus protection for your PC
Cybercriminals are always developing new ways and becoming more and more sophisticated at obtaining your sensitive data or injecting malware onto your computer. Despite the name antivirus protection, viruses are far from the only online danger. Whether it’s blackmailing ransomware that’s holding your data hostage, spyware that’s monitoring everything you do, or a Trojan that’s hidden malware on your system — malware has many faces and is spread in different ways. There are many dangers lurking around the corner, especially when surfing the internet — such as when using unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots, which are often used to launch cyberattacks, or phishing websites that target your online account log-in details.
This makes it a good idea to arm your Windows PC with an antivirus protection solution with enhanced levels of protection. A good antivirus program monitors your PC in real time and helps you regularly scan your computer for malware and protect it from online threats. That’s why our advanced AI technology with cloud-based threat detection provides you with dependable real-time protection and thorough virus scanning. And to ensure your PC protection is always up to date, virus definitions are updated automatically.
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows also includes additional cyberprotection tools such as a browser safety extension with phishing protection to block unsafe and dangerous websites, plus a software updater to keep your programs up to date and protected from attacks on recently discovered software vulnerabilities.
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows: Antivirus protection for your PC that you can count on — and costs nothing
Our antivirus program for Windows 10 and Windows 11 uses the latest cloud security technology to quickly detect even the latest online threats. Avira Free Antivirus system protection is always active, monitoring your PC automatically. Every file that’s used, copied, or accessed is scanned in real time and blocked if a threat is detected.
Files are scanned and detected in the Avira Protection Cloud, which has a powerful scan engine and uses our self-learning AI system NightVisionTM. If a suspicious file is discovered, this file’s digital fingerprint is analyzed and compared with the virus database. Each digital fingerprint uploaded to the cloud expands the continuously growing database, improving virus detection capabilities. This means ransomware can also be detected and blocked quickly and reliably.
Avira Antivirus Pro goes one step further still, offering even stronger ransomware protection. The advanced antivirus protection for Windows 10 and Windows 11 not only performs a signature-based but also a behavior-based analysis, detecting even previously unknown mutations. In addition, your files are prioritized so they’re scanned even faster. In addition, Avira Antivirus Pro for Windows also features integrated web protection as well as email protection to scan your emails for phishing links and malicious attachments, plus the Avira Firewall.
How to turn on Avira’s Windows antivirus protection
Click the download button to save Avira Free Antivirus, open the downloaded file, and follow the installation instructions. Once installed, system protection runs automatically in the background, but can be turned off temporarily if you want.
You’ll need to start the virus scanner manually, which runs in the foreground. You can run a quick scan to check the most vulnerable areas of your device or have your entire system checked with a full scan. You can also run preset or custom scans, and schedule and manage your scans.
The convenient Smart Scan feature allows you to check your device for cybersecurity, online privacy, and performance issues with just a single click. This is all thanks to our free Windows protection solution offering much more than just an antivirus program.
Avira Free Antivirus for Windows: Free antivirus protection for your PC — and more besides
With our free antivirus solution for Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can not only protect yourself and your device from malware such as viruses but also get many other tools to boost your cybersecurity, online privacy, and device performance.
VPN: The VPN helps you encrypt your online traffic and surf anonymously, So you can surf more safely even on unsecured Wi-Fi networks.
Software updater: The software updater helps you keep your programs and drivers up to date and close security holes in outdated software.
Browser safety extension: The Avira Browser Safety extension helps you block unsafe and phishing websites, malicious downloads, as well as ads and online tracking.
Password manager: The password manager helps you generate super-strong and unique passwords for your various online accounts and store them more securely.
Tuning tools: The tune-up utilities help you clean up and put the zip back into your devices and optimize the start time of your Windows PC.
Yes: Avira Free Antivirus for Windows 10 and Windows 11 is available to download for nothing. The antivirus protection program for your PC uses the same scan engine as Avira Antivirus Pro for online protection you can count on. The Pro version for Windows has additional features such as integrated web protection, email protection to block malicious attachments and phishing links, advanced ransomware protection, and the Avira Firewall.
Our PC antivirus protection solution Avira Free Antivirus is available as a free download for all computers running Windows 7, 10, or 11. We also offer free online protection solutions for your mobile devices in the form of Avira Antivirus Security for Android and Avira Mobile Security for iOS.
Windows 11 offers basic antivirus protection with the pre-installed Windows Defender app — although unlike Avira Free Antivirus for Windows, it does not have additional cyberprotection levels and online privacy features. These include a VPN, a password manager, a browser safety extension with phishing protection, and a software updater that also updates third-party PC programs. That’s why we recommend using our free antivirus protection solution Avira Free Antivirus on your Windows 11 computer to boost your online security.
Although Windows Defender doesn’t conflict with other antivirus programs, it’s best to only have one antivirus program running at any one time so multiple security apps running simultaneously don’t impact on your device’s performance. If you’ve installed other antivirus software, you can disable Windows Defender’s real-time protection temporarily in the virus & threat protection settings in the Windows Security app.
In short, there is none. When we added additional tools and features such as the VPN, the software updater, the optimization tools, and the password manager to our standalone Avira Free Antivirus solution, we renamed this all-in-one solution Avira Free Security. So that even those users who don’t know this and who are searching for Avira Free Antivirus can find what they’re looking for, we still offer Avira Free Security under the name Avira Free Antivirus.