Avast Free Antivirus offers premium protection levels for free. Most of the providers submit their premium antivirus products for the tests. However, among 22 tested AV solutions, there were three free antivirus programs: Avast Free Antivirus, Panda Security Free Antivirus, and Microsoft Windows Defender. Avast received by far the best results for effectiveness and level of security.

How can we do this? Thanks to our proprietary CyberCapture technology, even our free antivirus software can offer top protection for all users. "Our security technology runs in the cloud, based on a vast machine learning network," explains Avast CEO Vince Steckler. "Each of our endpoints running our products acts as a sensor for malicious files and activities. Suspicious files are sent to our cloud servers, where they are subjected to a thorough check, possibly involving running the files in a virtual machine, machine learning analysis, and other proprietary checks. Our technology determines whether or not a file is malicious. If our artificial intelligence technology determines that a file is malicious, it pushes this information to our cloud servers, resulting in full protection of our more than 400 million users, in nearly real time."

What's the value of independent tests for consumers?

Ondrej Vlcek, Avast chief technology officer, said, "Because of the overwhelming growth of malware targeting consumers and businesses, labs like AV-TEST Institute have become an invaluable independent source of data to Avast. Their research has influenced our engineers to expand their knowledge of malware, revolutionize diagnostic and detection methods, and facilitate strategies to get real-time updates to hundreds of millions of people who put their trust in our antivirus products."

AV-TEST is a leading international service provider in the fields of IT security and antivirus research. Based in Germany, their 30 IT specialists run regular tests on major antivirus products to deliver independent objective results and help users and companies to select suitable protection. AV-TEST describes the details of the review on their website:

"During September and October 2016 we continuously evaluated 22 home user security products using their default settings. We always used the most current publicly-available version of all products for the testing. They were allowed to update themselves at any time and query their in-the-cloud services. We focused on realistic test scenarios and challenged the products against real-world threats. Products had to demonstrate their capabilities using all components and protection layers."

In October, AV-TEST institute ran several tests, including protection against malware infections against zero-day malware attacks, inclusive of web and email threats (real-world testing) or so called widespread malware.

Avast earned the maximum score of 6, which means that Avast users receive 100 percent protection against zero-day threats and 99.8 percent against malware. In addition, Avast users received only three false warnings, caused by so-called false positives, while the average industry result is five.

In comparison, Microsoft Windows Defender received only 89.9 percent in real-world testing on protection against zero-day malware attacks (which is categorized by the AV-TEST Institute as the minimum level of protection), causing 9 false positives.