Avast is one of the big household names when it comes to cybersecurity. The company has been developing antivirus software since 1988 and in the late ’90s, Avast software powered McAfee’s antivirus products, for a short while.

More recently, in 2016, Avast bought rival antivirus provider AVG, and in 2017, it acquired popular PC tune-up tool CCleaner. Last September, Avast completed a merger with NortonLifeLock, which has turned the two antivirus giants into a security software superpower. 

With a long history of innovation behind it and now, a member of a large family, Avast offers subscribers a wide array of products and services, from antivirus and malware detection tools, to a VPN.

While you can download for free and subscribe to many of these individually, Avast gathers everything together under Avast One, the company’s premium security suite.

Essential, Individual, Family subscriptions

Avast One subscriptions comprise antivirus software, privacy protection features, and some basic clean-up tools. Supported operating systems include Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. 

The antivirus software promises 24/7 active protection for your devices, an email scanner, and a Wi-Fi network inspector – the same core offering that Avast offers as a free download.

Avast One adds a host of other security extras like ID protection, ransomware protection, and live alerts if an unknown device joins your Wi-Fi network.

These features are also available with the Avast Premium Security suite, but this only works out as being slightly cheaper in terms of cost. It’s also not as generous in terms of coverage, as the entry-level Premium Security deal only covers one device (versus the five covered with Avast One Individual) and the more expensive version covers ten devices (versus 30 with Avast One Family).  

On top of that, Avast One comes with a number of extra features which you won’t find within Avast Premium Security.

Amazingly, Avast offers a free version called One Essential. This has a data cap for the VPN (a generous 5GB per week) and protects a single device. However, there’s nothing stopping you from installing it on other devices using other email addresses…

Features

Avast One includes SecureLine VPN, which uses the WireGuard protocol and, if you pay for the Individual or Family subscription, lets you connect to over 30 different countries with no limit on how much you can browse or stream. So wherever you are in the world, you can binge every series of Red Dwarf on BBC iPlayer. Which you should, if you’ve never seen it.

The clean-up tools search for junk files, blurry photos, and duplicate files that are taking up storage space. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Desktop apps

Given all of the features on offer here, Avast One could easily be overwhelming. Fortunately, the Windows and macOS desktop apps are very easy to navigate.  

On the left-hand column are shortcuts which take you to a home dashboard, which gives you an overview of what’s running. Under this is a branching menu of all the software options at your disposal. 

A message centre (regularly populated with alerts and tips and tricks) sits under this. At the bottom is an account page, where you can manage subscription settings, and check for software updates.

The set-up process involves running a Smart Scan for the first time. This quickly searches your device for common threats, and takes about five minutes. Once that initial scan is done you can (provided no viruses or malware were detected) leave Avast One to run in the background while you go about your business. 

Some features, such as Avast Web Shield, will spring into action when they’re needed. If you try to access a site flagged as being dangerous through your web browser, you’ll be stopped from doing so by a warning screen, which you can choose to heed or ignore. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Other things, like the Email Guardian, need to be enabled manually. Email Guardian works with both webmail and dedicated apps including Outlook or Mail. Once set up this, too, works automatically. In the Gmail web app, for example, Avast will add green tags to any emails deemed to be ‘safe’ and red tags to anything it thinks is ‘suspicious’. 

There’s also a ransomware protection tool, which by default sees key folders (Documents, Pictures, Videos, and Music on Windows and Documents and Pictures on macOS) given some extra protection. You can choose to bring more files into the fold, if you wish. 

Both the Windows and macOS versions let you run a Deep Scan. This combs your entire system for any viruses, and generally takes a bit longer than the Smart Scan. You can set up scans to run on all of your devices on a daily basis, or you can choose to run scans manually. 

Something that’s unique to the Windows version of Avast One is boot-time scans. This searches parts of your system not available during regular scans, isolating threats before Windows boots up – Avast recommends that you only do this if there’s a problem. It took just under nine minutes to complete a boot-time scan on my Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The Avast One firewall works in a similar manner to the built-in Windows Defender firewall, in that you can assign Wi-Fi networks to be either ‘trusted’ or ‘untrusted’. Avast One’s firewall comes with some features you don’t get on the built-in Windows firewall, namely the option to be notified if there are attempts on a network to steal sensitive information or scan your laptop for open ports. Mac users don’t get a firewall at all, so will have to stick to their built-in firewall.

A macOS-only Avast One feature is the external storage scan tool, which will extend security sweeps to any hard drives or USB sticks you have connected. 

Both the Windows and macOS apps feature a simple ID protection tool, which tells you if anything associated with your email address(es) has/have been compromised. As with Norton 360, you don’t get much more detail of how severe any breaches might be, just which accounts you may need to either shut down or change passwords for.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Mobile apps

The iOS and Android apps replicate almost every feature you get from their desktop counterparts.

While you can’t do things like run boot-time scans, or scan external drives, there is a neat extra – the secure photo vault. This lets you create a private photo gallery which you can lock with a PIN or fingerprint, although on the negative side, you can’t zoom in on or edit photos once you’ve saved them. 

The Android app goes one better, in that it also features an App Lock setting, which you can use to place a PIN/fingerprint lock on specific apps, too.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Performance

Avast’s antivirus software has consistently performed well over the years, and offers high levels of protection against viruses and malware with minimal impact on your systems’ performance. 

In the most recent round of testing from AV-Test, Avast One for Windows scored top marks in all three categories – protection, performance, and useability – as did its macOS counterpart. 

Only AVG and Bitdefender scored top marks in both the Windows and macOS categories, so Avast can be commended for that.

The Android version also scored top marks for protection and performance, but lost two points in the usability category, for falsely flagging apps downloaded from Google Play as security threats. 

Likewise, SE Labs gave Avast’s antivirus capabilities (in April 2023) an almost-perfect score, with a single percentage point being taken away in just one category ‘legitimate accuracy’ category, again for a few false positives. So if anything, Avast One is too protective. 

Fortunately, if it tries to stop you from downloading something or accessing a website which you know to be safe (in other words, you are 100% sure), you can override it, as shown below. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

VPN

The built-in SecureLine VPN lets you access the internet via servers based in 36 countries, including the United States, Japan, Ireland, and Australia. 

The fastest servers, and the ones most suitable for video streaming and peer-to-peer connections are all identified by icons, so it’s easy to quickly find something to suit your purposes. There are no data limits, even for streaming. 

You can have the VPN automatically turn itself on when you’re banking online, torrenting, or shopping, and there’s a kill switch, to stop any sensitive data leaking should the VPN connection fail. 

While the VPN doesn’t keep a log of browser sessions, DNS queries, or originating IP addresses, it does collect some information.  That includes timestamps of your VPN connections, and the amount pf data transmitted during your session, which could – potentially – be used to identify you. This information is deleted after 35 days, but if privacy is more important to you than anything when it comes to VPN use, look for a VPN that doesn’t collect any connection logs at all. 

While it was possible to watch BBC iPlayer from France, I wasn’t able to access US Netflix from the UK, regardless of which US server I picked. It’s sometimes the case with VPNs that a streaming service will be able to detect that you’re using a VPN, and are trying to fool it, and will prevent you from accessing content. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Price & availability 

Avast One is available as an Individual or Family plan, covering five and 30 devices, respectively. In terms of features, both tiers are otherwise the same. 

Prices are discounted for the first year.

Price-wise, Avast One competes well with McAfee Total Protection Premium, which costs £39.99 for the first year, and £109.99/year after that. 

They offer similar features and levels of protection, but a key difference is in the number of devices they can protect at once – McAfee Total Protection Premium lets you protect up to ten devices. 

Another difference is that McAfee’s ID protection feature is more advanced: it proactively monitors email addresses, rather than just telling you about past leaks.

While the first year discount isn’t as generous as the one you currently get with Norton 360, long-term, Avast One is kinder to your wallet, and the Family tier’s device coverage beats Norton 360 Advanced – which only covers up to ten devices. Again, though, Norton 360 offers more features, including cloud backup and a password manager.

Another alternative is ESET Internet Security, which is currently priced at £34.99 / US$49.99 / AU$69.99 per year for one device, and lets you add cover for more devices an extra £5 / US$5 / AU$5.

For more, see our roundup of the best antivirus software.

Verdict 

Boasting top scores from independent testing labs and an easy-to-use interface, Avast One offers individuals and families good protection from malware and possible scams, and a decent VPN. 

The problem, however, is that you get virtually all of this for free if you download Avast One Essential. Plus, while paying removes the data limit on the VPN and opens up access to all the servers, you still don’t get a password manager, parental controls or other extra features.

The ID protection tool is fine for free but it’s disappointing that you don’t get proactive monitoring when you’re a paying customer – something you do get with McAfee Total Protection Premium.

The ability to safeguard files is good, but again, you get this with the cheaper Avast Premium Security. The tune-up tools are all nice-to-haves, but not essential, especially when you can get CCleaner for free as well.

Avast One is generally very good at what it does and is a genuinely great option if you’re after a free security app. But it needs extra features if the paid versions are to be recommended alongside McAfee Total Protection and Norton 360.