Every security suite has antivirus protection at its core, but they differ wildly in how much they add beyond that simple protection. The cross-platform Bitdefender Total Security adds more than most. It builds on the impressive feature set of Editors’ Choice Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, which includes a network security inspector, powerful ransomware defense, a hardened browser, and an active Do Not Track system, among many others. Thanks to its extensive array of high-quality features, Bitdefender Total Security earns our Editors’ Choice award for entry-level security suites.

How Much Does Bitdefender Total Security Cost?

Bitdefender’s security suite products use a simple two-tier pricing system. You can choose a five-license individual subscription or a 25-license family subscription. Choosing the family version unlocks Bitdefender’s parental control component.

An individual subscription for Total Security costs $109.99 per year, the same price as Avira Prime. Norton 360 Deluxe runs a little more at the five-license level, $119.99, but that also gets you five no-limits VPN licenses and 50GB of hosted storage for online backups. With Bitdefender, removing VPN limits requires a separate subscription.

That same $119.99 subscription price lets you protect five devices with McAfee Total Protection. But if you’re going the McAfee route, you should really consider McAfee+. Yes, it’s $30 more, $149.99 per year, but that gets you unlimited licenses to protect your devices running Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and even ChromeOS.

While having unlimited licenses is a nice perk, few of us need more than the 25 licenses that come with a Bitdefender family subscription, which costs $10 less than McAfee+. F-Secure Internet Security used to match that $139.99 price for 25 licenses, but it has gone up to $154.99. As you can see, Bitdefender’s pricing is reasonably in line with the competition.

Getting Started With Bitdefender Total Security

As befits a product that spans many platforms, you activate your subscription by entering a code in the Bitdefender Central online console. Once the product appears in your console, you can install it on the system you're using, snap a QR code with your mobile device, or send an email with a link to install it on other devices. The installation link automatically downloads the appropriate installer for the active operating system.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

This suite looks almost exactly like Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. Each app features a left-rail menu with icons for Dashboard, Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. The top of each main window reflects security status and offers recommendations from the AutoPilot component. And six user-configurable button panels offer quick access to your most-used features. Naturally, this top-of-the-heap suite includes everything found in the feature-rich standalone antivirus.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Below the AutoPilot banner, three buttons let you launch a quick scan, a system scan, or a vulnerability scan, and two others activate Safepay or the VPN. A sixth button lets you put the system optimizer, password manager, or file shredder on the main window in place of an existing button that you don’t use as much.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

As with the antivirus, a left-rail menu lets you open pages devoted to Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. In the antivirus, the Protection page displays panels devoted to Antivirus, Advanced Threat Defense, Online Threat Protection, Vulnerability, and Ransomware Remediation. Total Security adds Antispam, Cryptomining Protection, and Firewall.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

The Privacy page in the antivirus includes Safepay, VPN, and Anti-Tracker. In this suite, you also get a password manager, video and audio protection, and parental control (if you’ve selected the family subscription). On the Utilities page, you find Anti-Theft, OneClick Optimizer, Profiles, and Data Protection. Only the latter two are present in the antivirus.

Shared Antivirus Features

Bitdefender currently holds perfect and near-perfect scores from four of the five independent antivirus testing labs that I follow. An antivirus can earn a maximum of 18 points from AV-Test Institute, and that’s exactly what Bitdefender did. In the three tests I track from AV-Comparatives, Bitdefender earned two Advanced+ scores, the maximum possible rating, and one Advanced score. It aced testing by AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation and passed a tough test from London-based MRG-Effitas at Level 2.

My algorithm, which aggregates these disparate scores into a single rating, gives Bitdefender an excellent 9.6 out of 10. Also tested by four labs, ESET Home Security Essential reached 9.8 points. The only antivirus apps tested by all five labs are Norton, Avast One, and Microsoft Defender Antivirus. Defender earned 9.4 points, and Avast reached 9.8, but Norton reigns, with a perfect 10-point aggregate score.

In my hands-on malware protection test, Bitdefender didn’t fare as well, scoring 8.6 of 10 possible points. When my results don't match the labs' reports, I defer to the labs. However, Bitdefender’s trend toward consistently lower scores in my hands-on tests is worrying.

I also evaluate how well each antivirus prevents malware downloads using a feed of recent discoveries from MRG-Effitas. The antivirus gets full credit for each malware download it prevents, whether by blocking access to the malware-hosting site or by eliminating the malware during the download process.

Bitdefender’s 95% protection is precisely the median score, meaning as many apps scored higher as scored lower. In their latest runs of this test, Avira, Guardio, and Sophos Home Premium scored 100%. Several others came very close, with 99%, among them Norton, NordVPN Plus, and UltraAV.

Phishing websites aim to fool naïve web surfers into giving away their login credentials, which is a lot easier than writing malware to elude antivirus processes and steal those credentials. Bitdefender earned a perfect 100% detection score in my hands-on antiphishing test. Several competitors also reached perfection, among them AVG Internet Security, Avira, and Webroot Total Protection.

When I challenged the Network Threat Protection component to defend against real-world exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool, it detected more of them than almost every other current product. With regular antivirus disabled, Bitdefender’s powerful ransomware-specific components defended against the dozen file-encrypting ransomware samples I hit it with and also eliminated a full-disk encrypting sample.

Additional Features Shared With the Antivirus

Bitdefender's antivirus earns the Plus in its name by including a ton of features many companies would reserve for a full security suite. Much like ESET’s Banking and Payment Protection system, Safepay protects your online financial transactions with heightened security. Isolated from other processes, it features a hardened browser and a virtual keyboard for added security. Bitdefender’s password manager works with Safepay, but it accepts no other add-ons.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Past versions of Safepay watched for visits to financial sites and automatically offered protection, but that feature has been deemphasized. Just click to launch Safepay manually before you do any online banking. When you do open a banking site in Safepay, add it to your bookmarks and check the box to always open this page in Safepay.

Any time you’re surfing the web, advertisers and other snoops are tracking your activities. Your browser can send an official Do Not Track message, but the trackers are free to ignore it. Bitdefender’s Anti-tracker feature actively blocks ads and other trackers on the web pages you peruse. It displays the number of trackers from the current page on its browser toolbar button, with an option to fine-tune tracking and dig into details.

Bitdefender Antivirus also includes a virtual private network (VPN) that is installed the first time you try to use it. However, out of the box, this feature limits bandwidth to 200 MB per device per day and controls which VPN server you connect to. A separate subscription of $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month lifts these restrictions.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Upgrading from this suite to Bitdefender Premium Security lifts the VPN restrictions, giving you full access to Bitdefender Premium VPN. You can also upgrade to Bitdefender Ultimate Security, which bundles Total Protection with Bitdefender Premium VPN, Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, and (at the higher pricing tiers) Bitdefender’s identity theft remediation package.

A host of additional features come bundled with the basic antivirus. Its profile system can automatically configure settings to jibe with activities such as working or watching movies. You can scan the system for vulnerabilities, such as missing security patches or weak passwords. The File Shredder permanently deletes sensitive files, ensuring thorough deletion to foil forensic recovery.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Sometimes malware gets its claws so deeply into Windows that removing it is difficult. Many antivirus tools include a rescue disk that boots into a non-Windows environment, where the malware is defenseless. Bitdefender takes that concept a step further with its simple Rescue Environment. Just reboot, and you’re in control.

SecurePass Password Manager

For years, Bitdefender’s product line, starting with the basic antivirus, included Bitdefender Wallet, a very simple password manager. The SecurePass password manager has now superseded Wallet, and it’s only available with Bitdefender Total Security and the other Bitdefender suite apps.

Getting Started With Password Management

From the Bitdefender Central dashboard, you can install the password manager in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari on your device. You can also copy or email a link to grab the app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store, or snap a QR code.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

The first time you launch the password manager, it prompts you to log in to your Bitdefender account online and then create a separate, strong master password. As part of this process, it generates a 24-character recovery key that you can use to access your account if you forget your master password. This recovery key is highly sensitive information—I suggest you print it and store the printout in a fireproof lockbox or another secure location. If you save a PDF copy for printing, use Bitdefender’s File Shredder to securely delete the file once you’ve made that printed copy.

To get you started on your password journey, Bitdefender lets you import existing passwords or manually create your first saved account. The software can import passwords directly from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. It also imports from a handful of competing products: 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, KeePass, LastPass, RoboForm, and SaferPass.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

When manually adding an account, you fill in the website URL, username, password, and a friendly name. There’s an option to check whether the password you entered has appeared in a breach. You can even configure it to provide one-time codes for multi-factor authentication, a la Google Authenticator.

You can also protect your passwords (and your entire Bitdefender Central account) using multi-factor authentication. Once you’ve done so, logging in will require both your account password and the code generated by Google Authenticator or a similar authenticator app. There’s also an option to receive verification codes via email, but the app is a better solution.

Password Capture and Replay

Typing in new account records manually is tedious. Most users will just log in as usual and rely on SecurePass to capture their credentials as they are entered. After you submit your credentials, SecurePass displays a banner that lets you choose whether to save them. Credentials are saved with the URL as the title; you can dig into the password vault and change it to a friendly name if you wish.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

I tested the password manager on a random selection of secure sites, and it correctly captured all my logins, including two-factor logins like Gmail and Yahoo. When you return to a site, the password manager fills in your credentials, so all you need to do is submit them.

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If you’ve saved multiple credential sets, SecurePass displays a list when you revisit the site. Clicking the toolbar button opens a search box for saved accounts, and selecting one of those accounts navigates to the site and fills in your username and password.

Password Generator

You can invoke the password generator while editing or creating an account, or open it for full control by choosing Generate password from the left-side menu. By default, it creates 16-character random passwords using all four character types: capital letters, small letters, digits, and punctuation. You can set the length to 32 characters; we advise setting it to at least 20. After all, you don’t have to remember the generated passwords.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Security Report

Getting all your passwords recorded in a password manager is an important step, but it’s not the only step. You still need to review those saved passwords to make sure they’re not stupid. Bitdefender’s security report identifies passwords you’ve used more than once, passwords found in data breaches, weak passwords, and old (untouched for six months) passwords. It also flags any malicious or fraudulent URLs in your accounts.

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The report lists all your accounts, with status tags for each. Passwords that are breached, duplicate, or old get a simple tag, as do those with suspicious URLs. Every entry also gets a color-coded password strength tag: Strong, Good, Poor, or Weak. I’d be happier if the report let you sort by password strength, so you can start fixing the worst ones and just work through the list.

Identities and Credit Cards

It’s a short step from automatically entering passwords to automatically entering other personal data in web forms. SecurePass lets you save any number of identity entries with basic contact information. The amount of contact data is limited, though, and entry is awkward for US users. For starters, it breaks the address into Address, Country, and State/County, with no field for City or Zip.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

I couldn’t get the phone number field to accept the common ###-###-#### or (###)###-#### formats. It asked for international format, but the standard +# ### ### #### didn’t work. Eventually, I turned to my Bitdefender contacts, who explained that the accepted format consists only of numbers and the initial plus sign, no spaces or other characters.

You can also save details for any number of credit cards, so you don’t have to dig out your wallet and laboriously type in the details when you shop online. I saved an identity and a credit card and then visited a form-filling test website.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

When I opened the form-filling test, SecurePass offered a list of my available credit cards (just the one) to fill the form. Selecting one successfully fills in the necessary data.

As for the rest of the fields, SecurePass put a small icon in those it recognized. Clicking any icon brought up a list of identities, and selecting one filled in all the fields. This is an improvement since my last review, where form-filling was not enabled.

Secure Your Accounts Remotely

You can install the password manager browser extension on all your desktop computers and add the app to all your mobile devices. That’s convenient, but there's a security risk if one of your devices gets lost or stolen. An earlier version of SecurePass let you view all active password manager sessions and disconnect any that might be sketchy, in some cases, with the option to log out of sites for which the password manager had supplied credentials. At present, you just get a big Lock account button on the Settings page, which signs you out of the password manager on all your devices.

Improved Password and Group Sharing

A good password manager will make it easy to share passwords securely with people who need them. SecurePass offers two ways to share: both require opening an account in your vault and clicking the three-dot icon on the right-hand side.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Choosing Share Link gets you the option to create a link to the password’s details, with limitations. By default, the link expires after one day; if you need more time, you can change the expiry date. Also, by default, the link is valid for only one use, though you can set the usage limit to seven. And the shared password link is protected by…a password! You’ll transmit the link and the password using different communications media, of course. The recipient gets a copy of the account details.

Perhaps more useful is the full-blown sharing system, reached by clicking Share in the drop-down menu rather than Share Link. You start by sending an invitation to another SecurePass user to establish a trust relationship. The recipient opens the invitation within SecurePass to complete the connection.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

By default, the recipient gets read-only access. If you expand that to allow write access, the recipient can change the password, and it will change for you as well. At the maximal admin access level, the recipient can also control sharing. You click Sharing in the left-side menu to view and manage such shares.

If you need to share multiple account items with others, the Groups feature can help. You start by clicking Groups in the left-side menu and creating one or more groups. This is essential, as you can’t create a group on the fly. Now open each account item, click the three-dot menu, and choose Add to group.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Once you’ve loaded the group with goodies, you invite other SecurePass users to join the group. By default, new additions become group admins, but you can remove that status or expand it by giving the user sharing rights.

Doesn’t Beat the Best Standalone Password Managers

Many security suites include some form of password management, but few are as effective as the best standalone password managers. For example, Norton Password Manager is roughly on par with Bitdefender. Neither has advanced features like digital inheritance. Both flag weak and duplicate passwords to improve your security. The same is true of Trend Micro Password Manager. While all three of these password managers support some degree of form filling, this feature proved limited in all of them (though Bitdefender is improving).

The SecurePass password manager is included at no cost beyond your Bitdefender Total Security subscription, but you can do better without paying a dime. Proton Pass, PCMag’s Editors’ Choice pick for free password management, does everything Bitdefender does, includes provisions for passing on your accounts to an heir in the event of your untimely death, and handles secure sharing of passwords better. If your budget can stretch to password management, consider NordPass, which is also an Editors’ Choice pick.

Firewall Protection Without Fuss

Upgrading from an antivirus to its corresponding security suite often gets you firewall protection, and Bitdefender is no exception. As with many of Bitdefender’s security features, the firewall does its job with minimal fuss.

A typical personal firewall works in two ways: blocking network attacks and preventing misuse of the network connection by installed programs. Testing the former, I hit the firewall with some web-based attacks. It stealthed all the test systems' ports and warned me about a port-scanning attack. I should note that a typical PC on a home network is already protected by network address translation or NAT. It’s not even visible from the internet, so some of my testing requires special configuration to prevent NAT-based protection from taking effect.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

As noted, most firewalls also impose restrictions on how programs use your network connection. Out of the box, Bitdefender sets specific permissions for a wide range of known programs. Like Norton, it monitors unknowns to make sure they don’t misuse network traffic.

When personal firewalls were new, they relied on uninformed users to make important security decisions. Should SmertShpionam.exe connect with 87.242.66.56? Once or always? Users often made the wrong choice, leading to the current no-interaction style. If you’re a network expert, you can enable such pop-ups by switching the firewall to Alert mode (one called Paranoid mode). I turned it on to verify that it works, but most users should leave Alert Mode alone.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Exploit attacks use vulnerabilities in the operating system or common programs to compromise system security. Protecting against such attacks is often seen as the firewall’s responsibility, but with Bitdefender, even the basic antivirus gets Network Threat Protection. In testing, this feature outperformed almost all the competition.

A malware attack only reaches the Windows firewall if it has already bypassed standard antivirus techniques. At that point, it might well try to disable any remaining security. To test Bitdefender’s defense against such an attack, I searched for a simple on/off switch in the Registry. Not surprisingly, I found no such switch.

I tried terminating Bitdefender’s dozen protective processes. “Access denied” was the response to all but one, and the surviving processes revived that one as soon as I killed it. So far, so good.

Eight important services keep Bitdefender running, so I attacked those next. For each, I tried to simply stop the service. Or rather, I would have tried, but the services did not even enable a Stop button. Next, I tried setting the startup action for each to Disabled. All but one resisted the change, and disabling the remaining one didn’t affect any central security features. Overall, Bitdefender’s firewall proved tough and unobtrusive.

Spam Filter, If You Need It

Years ago, before the near-universal use of web-based email, spam filtering was an important component of security suites. Nowadays, most of us get spam filtered out by our email providers. Local antispam is only necessary if you rely on another provider, such as a long-standing ISP. As long as your email checks mail using the standard POP3 protocol and sends using SMTP, Bitdefender can help.

Along with your old email account, you probably use an old email client. Bitdefender’s spam filter adds a toolbar in Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird that lets you fix errors (spam marked as valid or vice versa). You can also click to put a sender on the Friends (never blocked) or Spammers (always blocked) list. If you use a different email client, you’ll have to manage those lists yourself and create a rule to toss marked messages into the spam folder.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Bitdefender’s spam filtering system can learn from mistakes. If you point out a message that is wrongly marked as spam or as valid, Bitdefender asks for permission to analyze it in the cloud. I suggest configuring it to send missed spam messages for analysis, but never send valid messages that were filed as spam, as the latter could contain sensitive information.

Where some antispam systems require many dozens of settings, Bitdefender needs only a few. I’ve mentioned the Friends and Spammers lists, and the options to send mismarked messages for analysis. You might consider setting it to block emails using Cyrillic or Asian character sets, assuming you never get legitimate mail using those character sets. That’s it for settings.

Preventing Video and Audio Snooping

You may think of spyware as malicious software that tries to steal secrets from your personal data. That’s true, but spying can spill over into real life. That webcam that you use for meetings and chats can be turned into a peephole for online pervs. And don’t think the camera light will give you a clue—peeping spyware can shut down that light.

Bitdefender’s webcam protection component aims to keep out the snoops. This simple tool limits webcam access to trusted programs, either apps that are already on its list or those you've approved. You get a warning when a new program tries to access the camera and an opportunity to block that attempt. Bitdefender also manages programs that wiretap you through the microphone.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

For both the webcam and the mic, known good programs that truly need video and audio access get a pass. You can also proactively add programs to the trusted list. Bitdefender's Mac antivirus doesn't offer this feature, which makes sense—neither does its standalone Windows antivirus.

Cryptomining Protection

If you’re seeking gold, you need a shovel to dig it out of the ground, but all you need to go mining for cryptocurrency is a computer and a lot of computing power. Watch out, though. Just as claim jumpers of old gained riches by stealing the work of others, cryptojacking attacks steal your computer’s CPU cycles to mine crypto for someone else’s benefit.

As attacks go, this one is relatively mild. Usually, an affected computer will just run more slowly. Some websites even clarify that you pay for their services by providing them with cycles for mining, rather than enduring advertisements. If you’d rather not subsidize crypto leeches, you can block all mining activities. If you want to reserve CPU power for your own mining, you can tell Bitdefender to keep you apprised of any external activity. I doubt many will use this feature.

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Performance Optimization for Windows

Each Bitdefender product has a menu down the left that includes Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. Upgrading from the antivirus to this suite adds features to all three pages. In particular, the Utilities page adds OneClick Optimizer and Anti-Theft. Just click Optimize on that page to start improving your PC’s performance.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

On my test system, the scan quickly found hundreds of items in the Disk Cleanup, Registry Cleanup, and Privacy Cleanup categories. As recommended, I clicked to view details in each category.

Disk Cleanup issues can include junk, temporary, and cache files. On my test system, the software found such files occupying 250MB of disk space. In the Registry Cleanup category, Bitdefender reported several types of useless or erroneous entries, including help files and shared DLLs. Privacy Cleanup refers to browser cache, cookies, and history. Specifically, it reported on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera—but not Edge. That’s an odd oversight, given that Microsoft put the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin back in 2023. I made the same observation in my last review, but nothing has changed.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

After reviewing the scan results, I clicked the big blue Optimize button to remediate all issues. Upon completion, the suite produced a detailed report in the form of a lengthy HTML document listing every file and Registry change. Similar components in some suites let you preview the changes and exempt specific ones, while others let you roll back all or some of the changes afterward. Most users would have no idea what to look for among the hundreds of items, so Bitdefender doesn't bother with either preview or rollback, except insofar as it lets you exempt a whole category, such as Windows Junk Files or Chrome Cookies.

Anti-Theft for Windows

A desktop computer typically sits in your home or a locked office, tethered by various cables and power cords. Theft isn’t your biggest worry in that situation. However, modern laptops are so powerful that many individuals (and companies) skip the desktop altogether. It’s convenient to take your computer wherever you want, but for a thief, it’s convenient to take it, period.

You don't have to do anything special to enable anti-theft on a Windows laptop. To manage this feature, you log into Bitdefender Central and dig into the device you want to protect. In the Remote actions panel, you’ll find Anti-Theft, along with options to remotely scan for malware, run the optimizer, and check for vulnerabilities.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Buttons on the Anti-Theft page let you locate, lock, or wipe the device. A similar feature for Android devices adds the option to sound a loud alarm, which is handy for finding a device you’ve simply misplaced.

When your laptop connects to Wi-Fi, Bitdefender determines its location via Wi-Fi triangulation, which can be quite accurate. However, on an Ethernet connection, it falls back on IP address geolocation with much coarser accuracy. You'll be lucky if it gives you the right city. Fortunately, a stolen laptop will almost always connect via Wi-Fi.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

If the thief stole your laptop while it was logged in to your account and managed to run off without letting it go into sleep mode, you could have a problem. No worries. Bitdefender can send a command to lock your user account remotely. Without your Administrator password, the thief can't touch your data. Be sure to use a strong password to protect your account.

Carrying around a laptop computer without password protection is foolish, but if you do, Bitdefender can still help. You can add a password during the lock process, and it will remain your login password.

In testing, the virtual machine responded instantly to the lock command. Selecting the wipe command triggered a warning that all data and apps on the lost computer would be erased. When I confirmed my intention, the test virtual machine immediately rebooted and started the data-wipe process. I had to recover from a saved snapshot to continue testing.

That's all for anti-theft, but it’s everything you need for a laptop. Yes, the option to sound an alarm is absent, but you're much more likely to lose a phone around the house than a laptop. You can locate and lock a lost or stolen laptop to prevent misuse. If it's hopelessly unrecoverable, you can send a remote command to wipe the device, keeping your data safe.

Parental Control in Family Subscription

Like spam filtering, parental control was once a typical bonus you’d get for upgrading from a simple antivirus to a full security suite. And like spam filtering, parental control is less important at present. PCMag currently recommends that you stick with the parental control built into your operating system.

Parental control is a component of Bitdefender Total Security and Bitdefender’s higher-tier suites, but only if you purchase the 25-device family subscription. Given that it’s built in, you might consider using it if you need it.

As with most modern parental control software, you manage each child's profile from the online console. This is also where you download the local parental control agent for each child’s device, whether it runs Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS. There’s no limit on the number of children or devices.

Setting Up Devices

Once you log in to the Bitdefender Central console, create a profile for each child. The profile includes your child's name, birth date, and an optional photo. Next, identify the child's devices and install the local app as needed. It's important to connect devices before working on settings, since some settings rely on information gathered from them.

On a Windows device with Bitdefender installed, setup is a snap. Select Devices from the child's profile, choose the active device, select a user profile, and click Save. Note that you can install parental monitoring on a device without requiring the entire Bitdefender suite.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Mac installation is similar. From the Mac in question, log in to Bitdefender Central, and click Add Device. For parental control on an Android device, download the parental app, log in to your account, and then associate the device with a child profile. During installation, you must give it several high-end permissions, including Device Administrator, Usage Access, and VPN. Note that there’s no actual VPN functionality. Rather, the app uses VPN technology to filter content.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Installation on an iOS device is quite different. You still download the app, log in, associate the device with a child profile, and give it all the requested permissions. But Bitdefender hands off much of its work to iOS's built-in parental control features, requiring you to set up Apple Family Control. That process proved arduous enough that I simply skipped the iOS edition, as I imagine most parents will.

Child Profile Settings

From the dashboard, click a child to open that child’s configuration dashboard. Panels on the dashboard let you view and manage the child’s device collection, set time limits for online use, view a chart of internet usage over time, and find the child’s location on a map. Other panels represent internet usage, device usage, and instances of blocked content access.

Near the top-right, you’ll find a link to quickly disable internet access on all the child’s devices. Clicking a link titled More pulls down a configuration menu with six choices: Content filter, Daily internet time, Focus time, Bedtime, Family time, and Pin code. Setting a PIN keeps your kids from disabling the parental control app.

Setting Limits for Your Kids

Bitdefender preconfigures content filtering based on the birth date you entered when adding the child’s profile. By choosing Content filtering from the menu, you can review and fine-tune its choices. For my imaginary 11-year-old, the defaults allowed access to 25 categories and blocked 18. Among the blocked categories were Hacking, Porn, and Weapons.

The list is alphabetized, and you can filter to show only blocked or allowed categories. As a parent, you can tweak the default settings to change which categories are blocked or allowed. Always leave Hacking blocked. Otherwise, a smart teen could evade content filtering by using a secure anonymizing proxy.

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Most kids aren’t actively looking for sex and drugs online, but sometimes an innocent search can lead to shocking content. Bitdefender can remove explicit results from search engines and quash harmful YouTube videos, but you must turn those features on to get their benefit.

Selecting Daily internet time from the menu lets you enable and configure limits for online time. For my test child, Bitdefender set a default 90-minute limit for each day of the week. You can click one or more days and change the limit, from 30 minutes to all day, in 30-minute increments. Limits apply across all devices, and when the time runs out, internet fun time is over.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

The parental control component includes a time-based reward system. A child who wants more time online can tap or click to request it. When you receive the request, you can grant a reward for good behavior with a click.

In addition to the overall daily cap on internet use, Bitdefender offers three other ways to control your children’s time online: Focus time, Bedtime, and Family time. Focus time is for homework and study, bedtime is for sleeping, and family time means kids should put down their devices and do something with the family.

An intricate system of daily settings lets you allocate time to any of these. I found the interface a bit confusing, with start and end times represented simply as numbers from 00:00 to 24:00. By setting bedtime to 21:00 to 05:00, I think I set it to run from 9 p.m. one night to 5 a.m. the next morning. The system does identify times that are already in use, so you don’t accidentally schedule the same hour for homework and family time.

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By default, internet access is banned during bedtime and family time but allowed during focus time, with the option to impose additional limitations on available content categories. The point is to give the child time online for serious pursuits such as homework and study. For reasons I can’t entirely fathom, you can allow access during bedtime and family time, each with its own set of category limitations. Internet usage during focus time, bedtime, or family time doesn’t count against the daily cap.

It’s common for parental control systems to schedule time periods during which internet or computer use is allowed, set a daily cap, or do both. Bitdefender’s system, with three different time types, seems way too fiddly. I doubt many parents will dig into it.

Content Filtering Without Explanation

I tried opening various inappropriate websites on different platforms to test the content filter. It successfully blocked inappropriate pages, including secure HTTPS pages, across popular browsers and a totally off-brand browser I wrote myself. However, unlike almost every other parental control system, it did not provide any explanation when it blocked a page. The browser just coughed up an error page.

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My Bitdefender contact confirmed that this is working as designed, because the filter works at the DNS level. On the one hand, that means it affects every internet-aware application with no loopholes. On the other hand, DNS-based filtering offers no opportunity to slip an explanatory warning page into the browser.

Checking back in the online dashboard, I found the blocked sites listed in the Prevented Content access panel. At the time of my last review, this list was cluttered with irrelevant links and third-party connections. I don’t think I’d care that my child’s browser “visited” settings-win.data.microsoft.com 38 times. By observation, the current list just shows significant sites that were blocked.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

To extend my testing, I quickly checked the safe search system. Holding the test system at arm’s length, I Googled several…unusual…sex acts that have innocent-sounding names. I didn’t observe any blocking by Bitdefender.

Child Location Features Diminished

Ask your kids to wear tracking devices, and you’ll get serious pushback. Give them phones, though, and it’s smooth sailing. With Bitdefender installed on those phones, you can log in online at any time to see a map with your child’s location. A few years ago, the parental control system included a powerful geolocation system. That’s gone. You can only view your child’s phone's current location now. In testing with a Pixel Pro 9, this feature didn’t work, even though anti-theft had no trouble locating the same phone.

Look Elsewhere for Parental Control

Bitdefender provides numerous parental control features, but most are disappointing. Content filtering doesn’t report why a site was blocked. The location feature now just maps your child’s location, with no geolocation features, and it didn’t work in testing. Yes, there’s a focus on children’s activities, but the distinction between focus time, family time, and bedtime just creates confusion. If you truly need parental control, consider using what’s already available in your operating system first. Failing that, have a look at the best dedicated parental control tools.

Protection for macOS

Installing this cross-platform product on a Mac gives you a full Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac installation, including the free, feature-limited VPN. The password manager and separate parental control app also work with Macs.

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The independent antivirus labs that test on macOS give Bitdefender perfect and near-perfect scores, and it earned a 100% detection rate in my hands-on phishing protection test. Bitdefender protects your files and backups against ransomware. The TrafficLight browser extension warns of dangerous links in search results.

Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac is an Editors' Choice in its field, sharing that honor with Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac. Please read my full review to learn all the details about Bitdefender's macOS product.

Total Protection for Android

To install Bitdefender Security on an Android device, you can snap a QR code from Bitdefender Central or email yourself a link. You can optionally download the separate Bitdefender Central mobile app and use it to install the mobile security app.

Initially, Bitdefender Security leads you through a lengthy series of important permissions and configuration actions. Among other things, you need to give it Device Administrator status to enable anti-theft and more mundane permissions, such as access to your photos, media, and files.

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Once you’ve worked through the numerous initial steps and cleared out any found malware, you’ll find a sparse and simple main screen with a security status icon in the middle and a menu of five icons at the bottom. The icons across the bottom represent Dashboard, Malware Scan, Web Protection, Scam Alert, and More, with the last item opening a menu of all features.

Malware Scan and Browser Protection

The malware scan at startup is quick, and you can relaunch it whenever you feel uneasy. Bitdefender also scans new apps as you install them. It doesn't go as far as Android apps from Norton and Trend Micro Maximum Security, which rate the apps you view right in the Play Store, but it checks new apps the instant you install them. It won't let you install anything malicious.

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While this page is open, be sure to enable App Anomaly Detection. This feature extends Bitdefender’s scanning for malicious behavior to detect zero-day attacks. In an unusual touch, the malware scanner page offers an extensive list of malware types it detects, including CoinMiner, Banker, and Obfuscated. You can tap any item for an explanation.

Bitdefender applies its powerful web protection to keep you safe from malicious and fraudulent sites, just as it does on Windows. By default, it protects Chrome, Firefox, and Brave. You can extend protection to an unusually broad selection of other browsers, including Dolphin, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex.

Perfect Android Lab Scores

I’m not equipped to test Android antivirus utilities by attacking them with real-world malware. Fortunately, three of the five antivirus labs I follow for Windows antivirus also test Android-centric protection. Like its Windows counterpart, the Android antivirus received high marks from all three. In fact, Bitdefender is the only app to earn perfect scores in the latest Android tests from all three labs.

AV-Test Institute rates Android antivirus tools on Protection, Performance, and Usability; Bitdefender received the maximum score in all three categories. AV-Comparatives and MRG-Effitas both rated Bitdefender’s protection as 100% effective. You can’t do better than these perfect scores.

Scam Alert and Account Privacy

The Scam Alert feature watches the links in incoming text messages and flags any suspicious ones. It also checks messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Discord) for signs of shady links. When it detects trouble, it advises you to refrain from clicking the link, delete the message, and block the sender.

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Account Privacy is a mobile-specific feature that checks the email address associated with your Bitdefender account against known breaches and reports any hits. On my test device, it found a handful of breaches dating back a few years. The app advises you to change the account password and mark the warnings as solved. You can add other email accounts to check, but you can’t go snooping through other people’s email for breaches. Bitdefender won’t scan until you enter the confirmation code that was emailed to the selected address.

Anti-Theft Features

It’s incredibly easy to lose your phone (or have it stolen). As soon as you install Bitdefender on your Android, open the Anti-Theft system and tap to enable its features. You’ll have to grant a few more permissions—enabling location tracking all the time is especially important. Be sure to turn on the Snap Photo feature as well. Now, when someone tries to unlock your phone, Bitdefender will silently send you a picture of the person holding it. While you’re here, you can tap for a preview of the alert sound. Just warn anybody nearby; it’s loud.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

In the Bitdefender Central online console, you can locate or lock the device, just as in Windows. By observation, the wipe option isn’t available for Android. As noted, you can also make it play a loud alert, which is handy if you've misplaced your phone.

Unusually Flexible App Lock

Nobody can access your phone when it's locked with a PIN or, even better, a biometric lock. However, someone who picks it up unlocked while you're not looking could dig into your private email or other data. App Lock lets you add an extra layer of security to Mail, Messages, Settings, or any other apps you choose. Just tap apps in the list to put them behind App Lock’s protective wall. Avast, Avira, ESET, and Trend Micro also offer a similar App Lock feature for Android.

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With most security apps, App Lock is a simple toggle. Bitdefender gives you some unusual choices. By default, every time you open or switch to a locked app, you have to unlock it with a PIN or fingerprint. You can set it to keep unlocked apps open until the screen goes off, but that defeats the purpose of this feature. More usefully, you can set it so apps stay unlocked for 30 seconds after exit, making it easy to come right back. Don’t want to mess with all that when you’re at home? You can configure it to stay unlocked when you’re on a Wi-Fi network that you’ve identified as trusted.

VPN Dual Personality

When you tap the More icon, you’ll see a VPN menu item. Unsurprisingly, tapping it opens the integrated VPN. However, you can do better. Back at Bitdefender Central, you’ll find an option to use the dedicated Bitdefender VPN app. This is a big improvement over the simple on/off VPN integrated into the mobile security app. Install the dedicated app; don’t waste time with the built-in one.

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The VPN offers a kill switch to prevent accidental data leakage if the VPN connection drops, and it can filter out ads and trackers. The split-tunneling feature lets you choose which apps use the VPN's encrypted tunnel versus your ISP's connection, a smart move given the measly 200MB of bandwidth available per day. Given that limit, you probably don’t want to set it to use VPN protection every time you connect with public Wi-Fi—but the option is available. If you’re savvy about VPN protocols, you can force the app to use IKEv2, WireGuard, or OpenVPN.

Upgrading to the premium-tier VPN removes the bandwidth cap and lets you choose your VPN server from a list of global choices. I’ll report on the no-limits VPN in my review of Bitdefender Premium Security, which includes it.

Bitdefender Central App

The Bitdefender Central app gives you all the abilities of the online console right on your phone. You can install it from the mobile app or vice versa. Using the Central app, you can monitor your other devices, activate anti-theft features, manage parental controls, and even trigger remote actions, such as launching a malware scan, an update, or an optimization pass. Your Bitdefender notifications have their own orderly page as well.

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A Comprehensive Android Suite

While it’s not the security extravaganza that Bitdefender offers on Windows, Bitdefender Total Security on Android is a comprehensive suite of security components. It includes antivirus, anti-theft, web protection, locking of sensitive apps, account privacy reporting, and more. The labs give it perfect marks.

Decent Protection for iOS

The same OS-level protections that make writing malware for iOS difficult also make it tough to create malware-fighting code. Bitdefender’s iOS edition doesn’t attempt to scan for malware—rather, it scans for settings that might need adjustment. Beyond that, it includes most of the same features as its Android equivalent.

You can install protection on an iOS device by snapping a QR code, sending an email link from Bitdefender Central, or installing from the Bitdefender Central app. As on Android, you’ll want to install the Bitdefender Central app because it gives you access to the same information and actions you get by logging in to the online console. While you’re in an installing mood, download the standalone VPN app as well. Do be prepared with your Bitdefender account credentials, as you’ll have to log in to all three apps.

When I installed the mobile security app, it ran a scan immediately. It reported that Account Privacy found some breaches and that browsing and scam protection were disabled. Closing the scan, I found those same warnings featured in the app’s main window.

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The Web Protection system uses VPN technology to filter all web traffic. When it encounters a dangerous domain, it disconnects and displays a warning. This is a totally local use of VPN technology—no servers involved. However, it’s not the same kind of protection you get on other platforms. The iOS version blocks connections at the domain level, not at the web page level. For example, it won’t catch the AMTSO phishing test page because the underlying AMTSO domain isn't dangerous. My Bitdefender contacts confirmed that this VPN-based technology doesn't interfere with your use of the actual VPN.

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On Android, Scam protection checks for dangerous links or scams in your texts and in Discord, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WhatsApp. The iOS edition only checks texts. In addition, you must configure its text-checking abilities by manually making changes to the device’s Settings. On the plus side, the iOS edition checks for scams slipping in through calendar invites, something I didn’t see on Android.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

Just as on Android, the mobile-specific Account Privacy feature checks your email for breaches and exposures. It automatically checks your Bitdefender account email, and you can add other emails you use. Where some similar features offer detailed descriptions of found breaches, Bitdefender simply advises you to change the password for the affected site and then remove it from the list.

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A simple on/off VPN is integrated into the mobile app, but you’re better off installing the separate full-scale VPN app. The settings and behavior of this app almost precisely match those of the Android version discussed above.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

The Bitdefender Central app also works almost identically to its Android equivalent. You can use it to review the security status of all your devices, to run scans remotely, and to manage the anti-theft feature. A Notifications page lets you view recent activity across all your devices. It’s definitely a handy little app.

(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)

As noted, the very nature of iOS makes writing a typical malware scanner well-nigh impossible. Like the competition, Bitdefender doesn’t try to do that. But it does carry over as many other mobile security components as possible from the Android app. Its iOS protection is better than most.