- Pros
Protects files and backups from ransomware. Top ratings from two independent testing labs. Excellent score in our antiphishing test. No-hassle Autopilot mode. Blocks ad trackers in browsers. Includes VPN.
- Cons
Full access to VPN features requires separate subscription.
- Bottom Line
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac gets top marks from the independent labs and in our own hands-on testing. With its handy Autopilot mode, you can set it, forget it, and have confidence that your Mac is protected against malware.
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Long-time Windows users know that going without antivirus software is just plain crazy. Apple computers need protection, too, even though it doesn't always seem like it. When you're looking for Mac antivirus protection, it couldn't hurt to go with a name that's famed in the Windows world, like Bitdefender. While Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac may not offer the bonanza of added features that its Windows cousin does, it goes beyond most of its Mac competitors, with VPN protection, tracker blocking for your browser, and defense against ransomware.
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Right from the start, it's clear that Bitdefender brings more than the minimum antivirus protection to your Mac. You should definitely accept the installer's offer to enable Safe Files ransomware protection (more about that later) and to protect Time Machine backups against tampering. Once the product itself is installed, you'll also want to enable the Traffic Light browser extension, which identifies dangerous websites, and the new Anti-tracker feature, which prevents advertisers from profiling you on the web.
In this latest edition, the macOS product's main window precisely duplicates that of Bitdefender Antivirus Plus on Windows, except there's no option to change out the quick action buttons at bottom right. The pages reached by clicking Protection and Privacy in the left-rail menu are vastly less busy than in the Windows edition, though. On the Protection page, you can launch a quick, full, or custom scan, check quarantine, and manage browser extensions. The Privacy page is fully devoted to Bitdefender VPN (more about the VPN later) and Anti-tracker.
As with the Windows product, Bitdefender on the Mac defaults to running in Autopilot mode, making all necessary security decisions. Also as on Windows, AutoPilot now does more, displaying recommendations to make sure you take advantage of all the available features.
Pricing and OS Support
For $39.99 per year, you can install Bitdefender on a single Mac; raising that to $59.99 extends protection to two more systems. ESET and Kaspersky precisely match this pricing scheme. Webroot is similar, but you get three licenses for less—just $49.99. McAfee AntiVirus Plus (for Mac) also costs $59.99 per year, but that subscription includes protection for every macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS device you own.
Avast, Avira, AVG, and Sophos Home (for Mac) are totally free, which is handy if you didn't budget for Mac antivirus. Intego lists for $99.99 per year to protect three Macs. That sounds high, but it's more of a security suite than a mere antivirus. Norton is also a suite, which makes its price ($99.99 per year for five licenses) seem more reasonable.
If your Mac is brand-new, it has the very latest and greatest operating system. Good for you! But if you're running an older version, your need for antivirus is even greater. Like ESET Cyber Security (for Mac), Bitdefender works on anything from Mavericks (version 10.9 of the OS) to the present. Others require a more recent version. With Avira, McAfee, and Sophos, you need El Capitan (10.11) or better. Kaspersky, Norton, and Trend Micro need at least Sierra (10.12).
Excellent Malware Protection Scores
We have an elaborate set of hand-coded tools, developed over a period of years, that help in our hands-on Windows antivirus testing. On a Mac, they're worth exactly nothing. Oh, we can run a few tests manually, but for the most part we rely on reports from the major labs. Four of the labs we follow report on Windows antivirus products, just two on Mac products
Both the testing labs that we follow for macOS antivirus include Bitdefender in their testing roster, and both give it excellent scores. Like most products in the latest test by AV-Comparatives, Bitdefender achieved 100 percent success protecting against Mac-specific malware.
Because it's possible for a Mac to act as a carrier for malware that attacks Windows, the researchers also check how well each antivirus detects Windows threats. Bitdefender also managed 100 percent in this test, as did most tested products. The exceptions were CrowdStrike and Intego Mac Internet Security X9, which claim to detect Windows malware but simply didn't, and Webroot, which caught just 33 percent of the Windows malware samples.
Just as with Windows antivirus products, the testers at AV-Test Institute rate products on protection, performance, and usability, assigning up to six points in each category. Bitdefender aced all three tests for a perfect score of 18 points. Trend Micro also took perfect scores from both labs, the only other product to do so.
Windows Malware Protection
ESET, Intego, Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac, and a few others include the ability to automatically run scans on a predetermined schedule. Bitdefender omits this feature, because its real-time protection should catch any new malware before such a scheduled scan. That does mean that it's important to run a full System Scan as soon as you've installed the product, to make sure your Mac is clean.
A full scan with Bitdefender took 24 minutes, the same as Avira, and less than half the average time among current Mac products. Running a quick scan, which looks for active malware and checks system areas typically used by malware, took just one minute. That's fast, but Norton's quick scan took just 30 seconds, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (for Mac) finished in 15 seconds.
All the products we've reviewed recently promise that they'll detect and remove Windows malware too, so your Mac doesn't become a Typhoid Mary. When we opened a folder containing our Windows malware samples, Bitdefender didn't react immediately, so we scanned the folder. Its scan window reported detecting nearly four times as many threats as there were files present, due to some multiple detections. One sample needed manual intervention; on Bitdefender's advice we simply deleted it. It removed the infection from another sample, leaving a clean file, uncommonly deft for a Mac antivirus handling Windows malware.
When we counted the survivors, we found that the antivirus had dealt with 78 percent of the samples. That's pretty good, but F-Secure Safe (for Mac) whacked 91 percent of the samples, ESET managed 93 percent, and Webroot swept the field, with 100 percent detection.
Superb Phishing Protection
Sites that host malware tend to be locked to a specific operating system—most often Windows. Phishing sites, though, are totally inclusive. No matter how you're browsing the web, whether from a laptop, a game console, or an internet-aware can opener, if a phishing site tricks you into giving away your security credentials, you're hosed.
To test how well an antivirus utility protects against phishing, we start by collecting the newest phishing URLs we can find on the web, with an eye to ones that haven't made it onto blacklists. We use a hand-coded test utility to simultaneously launch each URL in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, relying on each browser's built-in fraud protection. We use the same utility when testing a browser protected by a Windows antivirus. As for the Mac products, well, our utility works only in Windows, so on the Mac our testing involves a lot of fancy cut-and-paste into the browser's Address bar.
We tested this product simultaneously with Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, and the two products turned in exactly the same score, 99 percent detected. That's a contrast with our previous review, in which the macOS product scored well below its Windows counterpart. In our collection of macOS antivirus tools, only McAfee has done better. On the Mac, as on Windows, it detected and blocked 100 percent of the phishing URLs we threw at it.
Traffic Light for Search Result Protection
If you try to navigate to a fake or dangerous site, Bitdefender's Traffic Light browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) steers you back to safety. Traffic Light also marks up search results, using green and red icons to identify safe and dangerous links. If you stay away from red-light links, you should be safe.
Clicking the red icon opens a page with detailed information about why the link is dangerous. You get a laundry list of reasons, with relevant icons highlighted. In most cases it's phishing or malware. But other reasons include Facebook scams, sending unsolicited email, and piracy.
Note that the Windows antivirus no longer bundles Traffic Light, because it has a more powerful Web Protection component. Traffic Light lives on under macOS!
New Anti-Tracker
New in the current edition, Bitdefender includes an anti-tracker browser extension. Like Traffic Light, it supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
When you visit a site that contains ad trackers, site analytics trackers, or other trackers, Bitdefender puts the number of trackers on the extension's toolbar icon. By default, its active Do Not Track system blocks them all. You can click for a summary by category, which includes an estimate of the page load time saved. You can disable blocking of specific categories, too. You'll find similar Do Not Track functionality in a variety of security tools including Abine Blur, Avast Security Pro (for Mac), and Kaspersky Internet Security.
Bitdefender VPN
Bitdefender's many layers of antivirus, web, and network protection keep your devices and their data safe. However, when you connect to the internet your data in transit is potentially at risk. To ensure privacy for your data, you need a VPN (virtual private network). When you connect using a VPN, nobody, not even the owner of the shady Wi-Fi network you're using, can access your network traffic, and you'll be harder to track as you move across the web.
Pricing for Premium
Bitdefender VPN isn't available as a standalone product. Even the feature-complete Premium edition requires that you're already running a Bitdefender antivirus or security suite. This VPN is a re-branded version of the AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite VPN service. Bitdefender uses AnchorFree's servers and services, but your information is secure with Bitdefender. AnchorFree cannot see your online activities and only receives a Bitdefender identifier.
The VPN service will work out of the box, but only in a limited mode until you pay for a Premium subscription. The free version of Bitdefender's VPN restricts your use to 200MB per day. That's more generous than TunnelBear VPN's free version, which offers only 500MB per month. The free version also limits which VPN servers you can access. At the other extreme, the free version of ProtonVPN doesn't impose any limits.
If you decide to upgrade to the Premium edition of the Bitdefender VPN, you get access to all available VPN servers, with no data cap. An annual subscription costs $39.99 per year, or you can pay $6.99 per month. That's a remarkably low monthly cost, comparable to very affordable Private Internet Access VPN, which costs $6.95 per month. It's also notably less expensive than Hotspot Shield itself, which costs $12.99 per month.
The average price per month for a PCMag top-rated VPN service is about $10.50. Bitdefender is a little more than half the price of NordVPN and only 4 cents more than Private Internet Access. A typical standalone VPN allows use on a specific number of devices, most commonly five. With Bitdefender, you get as many devices as you have licenses for the underlying antivirus or suite. The price of the Premium VPN doesn't change.
Simple User Interface
The Bitdefender VPN is very simple: a slender grey rectangle with a large, blue button to connect the VPN. You change the VPN server from the pull-down menu, although you can only select the country to which you will connect. Other services, like NordVPN, let you select the specific server in a given country, and even tell you what kind of load that server is experiencing. Bitdefender is more of a set-it-and-forget-it affair. That said, it has only a few options: turning notifications on or off, configuring the VPN to connect automatically on unsafe (read: unsecured) Wi-Fi networks and having it launch on Windows startup.
The stripped-down nature of Bitdefender VPN Premium is understandable when you consider that it's being sold as an add-on to Bitdefender antivirus products. In fact, you cannot use Bitdefender VPN Premium as a standalone product—it must be installed alongside a Bitdefender antivirus or suite product.
Other VPN services, like TorGuard VPN, have a host of add-on options, like dedicated IP address and access to a 10GB network. NordVPN and ProtonVPN let you connect to the Tor anonymization network through their clients. Several VPN services also offer servers designed for specific activities, like P2P file sharing or Netflix streaming. The Bitdefender VPN doesn't have these, although it allows file sharing on the networks used by the Bitdefender VPN.
On the subject of Netflix, we found that we could not connect to the popular video streaming service while the Bitdefender VPN was active. That's not surprising, since we couldn't access when using Hotspot Shield, either. Netflix is very active about blocking VPNs, but VPNs are active in trying to keep their customers streaming happily. It's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. When we last tested the services, NordVPN, Private internet Access, ProtonVPN, CyberGhost VPN, and IPVanish were the top-rated services that successfully worked with Netflix.
None of the documentation we found on the Bitdefender VPN outlined how many servers are available, but we've been told it's the same as those available with the first-party Hotspot Shield client. Hotspot Shield has 2,500 servers in 73 countries. That's a strong showing, beating out much of the VPN small fry. It's just shy of the heavy hitters, such as Private Internet Access, CyberGhost, and ExpressVPN, all of which have 3,000 servers or more. NordVPN, however, leads the pack with around 5,300 servers.
A large number of servers is useful, since it means fewer people will be allocated per server. Fewer people in a server generally means better performance, as you won't have to share as many slices of the bandwidth pie.
Server locations also matter, partly because more locations means more options for spoofing your own location, but mostly because a closer server will usually yield better speed and will definitely have lower latency. NordVPN, for example, is available in 62 countries, and ExpressVPN covers an impressive 94 countries.
You won't find an option to change the protocol used by the Bitdefender VPN client to create its encrypted tunnel. That's because Bitdefender always uses the OpenVPN protocol. That's good. We prefer OpenVPN, which has the advantage of being open-source and picked over for potential vulnerabilities.
See How We Test VPNs
Average Impact on Connection Speeds
A major concern with using a VPN is it impact on your internet connection speeds. Using the Ookla speed test tool, we find a percent change between speed test results with the VPN and without the VPN. Our testing was carried out in our New York offices, using the VPN server automatically assigned to us. These results are not the final word on Bitdefender VPN Premium's speed test performance, but rather for comparison between other products. Your results will differ depending on your location and connection.
(Editors' Note: Ookla Speedtest is owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis.)
In our testing, we found that the Bitdefender VPN Premium reduced download speed results by 97.3 percent, and upload speed results by 87.9 percent. Bitdefender VPN also increased latency by 3,994.4 percent. As of writing, HideIPVPN is the fastest VPN we've yet tested, due to its low impact on upload and download speed test results.
You can see how Bitdefender compares in the chart below.
Bitdefender VPN Premium's upload speed test results were close to the median of 82.4 that we've recorded across some three-dozen VPN products. That's the end of the good news, however. We've recorded a median latency of 100 percent and a median download speed reduction of 88.1 percent—a far smaller impact that Bitdefender VPN Premium.
As noted, Bitdefender didn't roll its own VPN. Instead, it whitelabeled the Anchorfree Hotspot Shield VPN product. Interestingly, in our testing the Bitdefender VPN Premium results didn't match with the Hotspot Shield VPN results. Hotspot Shield reduced download speed results by only 69.3 percent, and decreased upload speed results by 88 percent. Hotspot Shield increased latency by 5,300 percent—the worst score we've yet recorded.
If you're already paying for Bitdefender and are looking for a no-frills VPN service at a bargain basement price, Bitdefender VPN Premium fits the bill. If you're looking for more features, such as Tor-over-VPN, multi-hop connections, and so on, we recommend looking at NordVPN or ProtonVPN. Private Internet Access is slightly cheaper, and TunnelBear VPN significantly friendlier. All four of these products have received the coveted PCMag Editors' Choice award for their individual excellence.
You might also consider Symantec Norton 360 Deluxe (for Mac) if you want powerful security that includes VPN protection. At $99.99 per year for five licenses, it looks more expensive than Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, which charges $69.99 for the same number. However, with Norton you get a full-featured VPN at no extra charge.
Ransomware Protection Keeps Files Safe
Ransomware is a growing threat, and ransomware protection is showing up in more and more security products. Some add a monitoring layer that looks for behavior that suggests encrypting ransomware. Others, Bitdefender included, balk ransomware activity by limiting access to files in the folders typically affected by ransomware.
A ransomware attack doesn't aim to disable your computer. The perpetrators know you'll need a working computer in order to pay up. Ransomware usually attacks documents, images, and other personal files, working in the background until its dirty deeds are done. Bitdefender's Safe Files feature defaults to protecting your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Pictures folder; you can add any other folders in which you routinely keep important documents.
Known and trusted applications can access your files just as they always would, but when an unknown program attempts to create or modify files in a protected folder, Safe Files prevents the change and pops up a warning. If you recognize the program, if it's something you're actively using, you can add it to the trusted list. If not, let Bitdefender keep blocking the attack.
Under Windows we had no trouble seeing this feature in action. We used a couple of programs guaranteed to be unknown, a simple fake encryptor and a tiny editor coded in house. We don't have anything similar for the Mac in our bag of tricks, but we have no doubt the feature works in just the same way.
Savvy Mac users know that Time Machine keeps regular backups, theoretically insulating them against ransomware. Your files got encrypted by ransomware? Just restore from backup! But since the Time Machine backup drive is often left connected to the Mac, there's a possibility that backups could be compromised by a ransomware attack. Just as it prevents unauthorized access to your documents, Bitdefender also protects your Time Machine files.
A Fine Choice
Bitdefender has long been a name to conjure with in the world of Windows security software, and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac carries on that tradition. Two labs certified its protection with their very best scores. In our own hands-on test of antiphishing prowess, Bitdefender beat all but one Mac-based competitor. It also protects your files and backups against ransomware.
This tool doesn't have the humongous collection of security bonus features found in its Windows equivalent, but it brings more to the table than most of its macOS competitors. Bitdefender is an Editors' Choice for Mac antivirus. With scores nearly as good as Bitdefender's and even more features, Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac is also an Editors' Choice.
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac
Bottom Line: Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac gets top marks from the independent labs and in our own hands-on testing. With its handy Autopilot mode, you can set it, forget it, and have confidence that your Mac is protected against malware.
Cnet Avast For Mac
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