Trend Micro Antivirus Review (2026): Is it the right choice?

Full Review

Trend Micro offers strong malware detection and real-time protection, with solid privacy tools that enhance both online and offline security. While its extra features may not rival top competitors, Trend Micro’s intuitive interface and reliable core functionality make it a good choice for most users across its various plans.

Anti-Malware

Trend Micro’s anti-malware engine combines traditional signature-based detection with modern machine learning to deliver strong, multi-layered protection. It effectively detects and eliminates both well-known and zero-day threats while maintaining high performance and minimal system slowdown. The software provides three primary scan modes—Quick, Full, and Custom—offering flexibility for different user needs.

In tests, the Quick Scan efficiently detected all malicious files within critical system areas in under two minutes on Windows and about fourteen minutes on macOS. The Full Scan performed a deep inspection of all drives in roughly forty minutes, which is faster than several competitors. It successfully located almost every malware sample while maintaining stable system performance.

Trend Micro allows users to customize sensitivity levels, manage notifications, and configure automatic handling of unsafe or unwanted files. The software also supports file whitelisting and offers control over the machine learning module. Although detection rates fell just short of perfection, the balance of speed, accuracy, and resource efficiency makes it one of the more dependable antivirus engines available today.

Anti-Phishing

Trend Micro’s anti-phishing and web protection tools efficiently block access to fraudulent and malicious websites through continuous verification against a live database of blacklisted domains. During extensive testing across multiple browsers, the software successfully prevented access to the majority of phishing attempts, outperforming built-in protections from Chrome and Firefox.

The Toolbar browser extension enhances online safety by scanning links in real time, marking search results with risk indicators, and blocking intrusive ads. It also includes privacy configuration shortcuts for social media accounts, enabling users to manage exposure more effectively. Pay Guard, a secure browser mode, provides sandboxed protection for sensitive transactions and automatically launches on financial or e-commerce sites.

Data Theft Prevention adds another layer of defense by restricting unauthorized sharing of credit card and personal details online. The whitelist management interface is intuitive, allowing users to safely override false positives when needed. Overall, Trend Micro’s anti-phishing suite offers comprehensive and user-friendly defenses that guard effectively against fraudulent links and identity theft attempts.

Firewall

Trend Micro’s Firewall Booster is designed to complement and enhance the native Windows firewall rather than replace it. This feature strengthens network-level protection by monitoring for suspicious connections and blocking malicious botnets that may attempt to hijack user systems. It adds an additional layer of intrusion prevention, particularly beneficial for users who rely heavily on public or unsecured networks.

The Firewall Booster dynamically adjusts its filtering behavior to detect unusual patterns in inbound and outbound traffic, automatically terminating risky connections before data compromise can occur. It integrates smoothly with Trend Micro’s other protection modules, ensuring consistent coverage across file, network, and web layers.

While it lacks the deep configurability of dedicated third-party firewalls, the simplicity of setup and automated protection make it suitable for both non-technical and advanced users seeking added security reinforcement. Overall, Firewall Booster effectively enhances system resilience without introducing unnecessary complexity.

Password Manager

Trend Micro’s password manager offers a secure vault for storing unlimited credentials and sensitive information, protected with 256-bit AES encryption. It features automatic form filling, password generation, auditing, and biometric logins. Additional protections include keystroke encryption and secure notes, further safeguarding against keyloggers and data theft.

The manager is available as both a browser extension and mobile app, though syncing between the two requires manual intervention—a notable inconvenience. The free version provides unlimited storage but limits auto-fill functionality to the first five saved passwords, encouraging an upgrade to the premium plan included in higher-tier security suites.

Operating on a zero-knowledge architecture, the password manager ensures that Trend Micro has no access to stored user data. However, if the master password is lost, recovery is impossible, and all stored information is permanently deleted. Despite these limitations, Trend Micro’s password tool delivers reliable performance, straightforward usability, and essential protection features ideal for most users.

VPN

Trend Micro’s integrated VPN provides fast, encrypted browsing and is available with its Premium Security Suite or as a standalone service. It supports both WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols, delivering high speeds even over distant connections. In testing, local connections experienced almost no slowdown, while international ones retained about 75% of baseline speed, allowing for smooth video streaming and downloads.

The VPN uses 256-bit AES encryption to secure traffic and successfully passed all leak tests, confirming effective IP and DNS protection. However, it lacks key features such as a kill switch, split tunneling, and obfuscation, which are common among premium VPNs. Additionally, its limited network of 17 countries restricts server choice and performance for global users.

Privacy remains a concern, as the VPN logs session durations, IP data, and browsing activity under the pretext of threat prevention. Streaming capability is limited—Netflix works, but most other platforms fail. While functional for casual protection and speed, it is not suitable for users demanding complete anonymity or comprehensive configuration options.

Other Security Features

Trend Micro includes several supplementary tools that enhance both protection and usability. Folder Shield safeguards specific directories against ransomware by allowing only trusted applications to access them, protecting critical files such as documents and photos. Secure Erase ensures permanent deletion of files, preventing forensic recovery.

The Data Theft Prevention feature prevents sensitive information, such as credit card or identification details, from being transmitted online without authorization. For troubleshooting and system recovery, the Trend Micro Diagnostic Toolkit offers utilities for creating logs, rebooting in safe mode, and managing real-time scan exceptions.

Additional enhancements include Wi-Fi Checker, which warns users about insecure wireless networks, and camera and microphone protection for macOS that notifies users of unauthorized access attempts. Identity protection tools are available for U.S. users, providing dark web monitoring, credit assistance, lost wallet recovery, and up to $1 million in fraud insurance coverage. Together, these tools create a comprehensive suite that goes beyond malware defense, offering privacy, identity, and system protection in one unified package.

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: November 2025).

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: November 2025.