Scanguard Antivirus Review (2025): Is it the right choice?

Full Review

Scanguard offers a user-friendly antivirus solution with a customizable interface. Its malware scanner uses Avira’s highly rated engine, ensuring excellent detection rates. However, accessing premium features like the VPN and ad blocker requires a significant price increase beyond the starting plan. The annual plan starts at €29.00, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee (14 days for monthly plans).

Anti-malware

Scanguard’s anti-malware capabilities leverage Avira’s highly regarded engine for both real-time protection and on-demand scans. Users can choose from four scan types: Quick, System, Smart, and Custom. In our tests, all scans performed well, with the system scan taking just over an hour and the quick scan completing in under two minutes. Scanguard effectively identified all test malware, including hidden and zipped files.

While its malware protection is excellent, leading brands like Norton and Bitdefender offer even stronger defenses with additional features such as dedicated ransomware protection.

Anti-phishing

Scanguard’s WebShield offers solid anti-phishing protection by blocking access to malicious sites, including phishing pages. It also features a web cache cleaner, ad blocker, and real-time blocking of suspicious “Low Trust” websites. In testing, WebShield successfully blocked most phishing sites but missed a few, whereas competitors like Bitdefender provided more comprehensive protection.

Scanguard also includes the Safe Site browser extension, compatible with major browsers. It can clear browsing history, block notifications, and further integrate WebShield for enhanced web safety. While effective overall, Scanguard’s web protections could improve in detecting all malicious sites.

Password manager

Scanguard’s Password Vault is a basic, secure password manager that integrates easily with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. It includes a password generator, but auto-fill and auto-save features require the desktop app to be installed. While functional, it lacks advanced features like two-factor authentication (2FA) and customization options.

Compared to standalone options like 1Password or Dashlane, Scanguard’s password manager is limited, missing features such as 2FA, breach monitoring, and secure password sharing, making it a less comprehensive solution for password management.

VPN

Scanguard’s Safe Browsing VPN delivers solid performance for browsing and streaming but comes at an extra cost, as it’s not included in the premium plan. It offers standard features like encrypted browsing and a kill switch, with connections available via IKEv2 or OpenVPN protocols. Users can access 100+ servers globally, which is decent compared to premium standalone VPNs.

In testing, speeds were generally good, even on distant servers, making it suitable for browsing, streaming, and torrenting (outside the US). The VPN works with popular streaming services, but lacks optimized servers for consistent performance.

However, the high cost is a drawback, as comparable VPNs like NordVPN or Surfshark offer more features at a similar price. For those seeking antivirus with VPN, TotalVPN provides better value, as it includes the same VPN with more features. Alternatively, consider Norton’s VPN or Bitdefender’s VPN.

Other security features

Scanguard includes several useful security features, such as:

System Optimizer

Scanguard’s system tune-up tools include a Junk Cleaner, Duplicate File Finder, Application Uninstaller, Startup Manager, and Browser Cleanup. These tools worked well during testing—clearing 500 MB of unnecessary files quickly and improving browser performance.

The Browser Cleanup extension also enhances browsing speed and reduces memory usage by putting idle tabs to sleep. However, Scanguard lacks disk optimization tools and performance boosters like those found in competitors such as TotalAV or Norton.

Ad Blocker

AdBlock Pro is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that effectively blocked ads and trackers during tests. While it performed well, adding support for more browsers would be a welcome improvement.

Identity Theft Protection

The Data Breach Checker monitors the dark web for compromised login credentials. It successfully identified a leaked account in my tests, but it only monitors email addresses and pulls data from the “Have I Been Pwned” database. In contrast, Norton offers far more comprehensive dark web monitoring, covering sensitive information like credit cards and IDs, and provides real-time alerts.

While Scanguard’s features perform well, they lack the depth and advanced functionality of other top-tier competitors.

Test score comparison

We conduct in-house anti-malware tests and review the results from AV-Test, a German lab renowned for its objective evaluations. Below is the average of the last 10 AV-Test results for Windows. Their scoring criteria are:

• Protection (1-6): Effectiveness in blocking malware.
• Performance (1-6): Impact on system speed.
• Usability (1-6): Frequency of errors like false alarms.

We calculate a final score using this formula:

Final Score = 60% Protection + 20% Performance + 20% Usability.

While these results influence our choice of the best antivirus for Windows 11, other factors like privacy and identity protection also play a key role. For a similar analysis for Android or macOS, visit our other comparisons:

• The best antivirus for Android.
• The best antivirus for Mac.

Note: Brands not listed in the table either do not participate in AV-Test trials or are tested too infrequently, such as Surfshark Antivirus.

Source: AV-Test (Last updated: December 2024).

Price comparison

We’ve compared the prices of the top antivirus products for Windows. To make it a fair comparison, we looked at what it would cost us, to protect a  single Windows PC with the most essential features:

• Anti-malware
• Anti-phishing (web protection)
• Firewall
• Password manager
• Unlimited VPN (no data limit)

A few notes:

• Some brands are missing features, lowering their value for money.
• Prices are second-year prices in the USA, without first-year discounts.
• Prices are rounded up for readability (e.g., $99.99 becomes $100).

Brands have different prices outside the USA. See those on their website.

User reviews

We’ve compared the user reviews of all antivirus brands. We’ve used the scores and review count of TrustPilot, a leading user review platform. 

We consider scores above 4.0 very good. Lower scores indicate that the brand might have a poor product or customer service. McAfee’s scores, for instance, are worrying.

Source: TrustPilot. Last Update: December 2024.