In the Feb.-March 2021 tests, Bitdefender caught 99.7% of malware and detected four false positives, while Kaspersky caught 99.2% percent and raised zero false flags. The difference were less pronounced in AV-Comparatives' tests, where the two were more evenly matched. (It's not always easy to tell.) Bitdefender's detection engine appears to be overcompensating to make sure it doesn't miss any malware. This all indicates that Kaspersky's malware-detection engine is better 'tuned' than Bitdefender's and has a keener sense of when something's malicious versus when it's not. Kaspersky registered just one in the former and zero in the latter. The differences, again, were in the false-positive rates: Bitdefender racked up 12 in November/December and eight in September/October.

The detection rates were the same in the two previous rounds of AV-TEST evaluations, in November/December and September/October 2020 - 100% detection rates across the board. The only difference was that Bitdefender registered a single false positive - a benign item mistakenly tagged as malware - while Kaspersky had none. (Image credit: Bitdefender/Screenshot by Tom's Guide)īitdefender earned four flawless, 100% detection rates in AV-TEST's January and February 2021 Windows 10 evaluations against both zero-day and widespread malware. Instead, they were the 'intermediate' suites, Bitdefender Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security, which offer several more features than their cheaper counterparts.īut because each brand uses one malware-detection 'engine' for all its Windows products, the protection results should be the same across a product line. The Bitdefender and Kaspersky Lab products tested by both labs were not the exact ones we’re comparing here.

AV-TEST's evaluations last two months apiece and use 64-bit Windows 10. Almost every month, AV-Comparatives exposes computers running 64-bit Windows 10 to the latest online malware in what the lab calls its 'real-world' protection tests against the latest online malware.ĪV-TEST uses two benchmarks: It attacks systems with brand-new 'zero-day' malware that hasn't been seen before (for which advanced detection features are needed), but also subjects computers to 'widespread' malware that has discovered and identified in the previous four weeks (which can be spotted by matching known malware 'signatures').

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