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ESET Quick Expert Summary

ESET is a secure antivirus suite with excellent malware detection rates, but it’s not as good as the best internet security suites in 2025. It supports Windows, Android, and macOS. However, many of its features are only compatible with Windows and Android, making it a basic option for Mac users. It also doesn’t offer a single security app for iOS (just lots of smaller apps).

ESET’s virus scanner performed better than most I’ve tested. It caught almost all the malware samples I downloaded onto my test devices, including several I hid in locations other antivirus scanners often miss.

ESET offers various additional features, including a firewall, anti-phishing tools, a network monitor, a VPN, diagnostics tools, and a password manager. It also has some advanced dark web monitoring features, but unlike TotalAV, setting these up is a painful experience. The parental controls are easy to use and work well — except for content filtering. I liked the no-frills password manager, which has perfect auto-save and auto-fill functionalities.

Overall, ESET is a decent choice, but if you want system optimization tools, top-notch parental controls, or comprehensive protection for Mac, there are better options on the market. However, one big positive is that ESET offers a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out risk-free.

Overall Rank
🔥 Firewall	✅
🌐 VPN	✅ (with ESET Ultimate)
🎁 Free Plan	✅ (Free online scanner)
💸 Starting Price	$49.99 / year
💰 Money-Back Guarantee	30 days
💻 Operating Systems	Windows, Mac, Android

January 2025 update: We’ve updated the screenshots to showcase ESET’s user interface changes. We’ve also added business plans to the Plans & Pricing section and reassessed the diagnostics tools. Finally, we tested and reviewed ESET’s newest features: Folder Guard and the improved Mac firewall.

ESET Full Review — Extensive Security + Some of the Best Anti-Theft Tools Around

ESET has a powerful anti-malware scanner, a highly customizable Windows firewall, really good anti-theft tools, and a decent range of additional features — all in an intuitive user interface.

However, ESET isn’t as good as many competitor antiviruses available for a similar price. ESET’s macOS version, system clean-up tools, and secure browser are inferior to those of top competitors such as TotalAV and Norton.

That said, ESET scored a near-perfect malware detection rate in my tests, so if your priority is protecting your device against malware, it’s a decent option. ESET offers several plans, a free 30-day trial, and a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

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ESET Plans & Pricing (For Personal Use) — Good Value Plans for up to 25 Devices

ESET has 3 main pricing plans for individuals and families, and you can choose whether you want to be protected for 1, 2, or 3 years. The plans are categorized under Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. There’s also a free online scanner that requires a small download and can detect and remove malware from a Windows device (but offers no real-time protection).

The Essential and Premium plans cover between 1 and 25 devices. With Ultimate, you have to pay for at least 5 devices. All plans offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, and Essential and Premium offer a 30-day free trial.

Note: Depending on location, ESET’s plans may include different names, features, and subscription durations.

Here’s a quick overview of ESET’s plans:

	Essential	Premium	Ultimate
Platforms	Windows, Mac, Android	Windows, Mac, Android	Windows, Mac, Android
Number of devices	1–25	1–25	5–25
Starting price	$49.99 / year	$59.99 / year	$179.99 / year
Malware scanning & removal	✅	✅	✅
Real-time protection	✅	✅	✅
Anti-phishing	✅	✅	✅
Ransomware protection	✅	✅	✅
Gaming mode	✅	✅	✅
Secure browser	✅	✅	✅
Firewall	✅	✅	✅
Webcam protection	✅	✅	✅
Anti-theft tools	❌	✅	✅
Password manager	❌	✅	✅
VPN	❌	❌	✅

ESET Essential — Most Basic Plan With a Few Interesting Extras

ESET Premium — Good Plan With Decent Password Manager

ESET Ultimate — Highest-Tier Plan With VPN & ID Protection

ESET Plans & Pricing (For Business Use) — Options for Any Business Size

ESET’s business plans are available on 1-, 2-, or 3-year subscriptions. How the plans are designed, with practically all features available as add-ons, allows businesses to choose the level of protection that matches their specific needs and budgets — from basic endpoint protection to advanced threat detection and response.

All plans are available for a 30-day trial and can cover 5 to 100 devices. You can contact ESET’s sales team to get a quote if you need more than that. Remember, when counting the seats you need, you don’t have to count mobile devices — you can protect them for free on all plans except for Protect Entry, the lowest-tier plan.

Here’s a quick overview of ESET’s business plans:

	Protect Entry	Protect Advanced	Protect Complete	Protect MDR
Platforms	Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux
Number of devices	5–100 (reach out to Sales for more)	5–100 (reach out to Sales for more)	5–100 (reach out to Sales for more)	5–100 (reach out to Sales for more)
Starting price	$211.00 / year	$275.00 / year	$287.72 / year	Tailored pricing
Management console	✅	✅	✅	✅
Endpoint protection	✅	✅	✅	✅
Server security	✅	✅	✅	✅
Full disk encryption	❌	✅	✅	✅
Cloud-based anti-ransomware and 0-day attack protection	❌	✅	✅	✅
Vulnerability management	❌	❌	✅	✅
Cloud office protection	❌	❌	✅	✅
MDR service	❌	❌	❌	✅
MFA	❌	❌	❌	✅
Priority support	❌	❌	❌	✅

ESET Protect Entry — Good for Businesses Without an IT Department

ESET Protect Advanced — Affordable Plan With Advanced Mobile Protection

ESET Protect Complete — Comes With Email & Cloud App Protection

ESET Protect MDR — Top-Tier Plan With ESET Security Experts’ Support

ESET Security Features — Thorough Malware Scans, Highly Customizable Firewall & More

Malware Scanner — Near-Perfect Malware Detection Rates + Lightweight Scanning

ESET offers a powerful malware scanner with various scanning options, all of which performed really well in my tests. The scan options on Windows include:

• System Scan. Scans every single file on your computer, including running processes, program files, system files, and cached files.
• Custom Scan. Scans individual files or folders.
• Removable Device Scan. Scans flash drives, external hard drives, phones, or other removable devices.

The System Scan detected almost all of my 1,000 test malware samples, which I’d hidden on my PC and removable devices. This is impressive and puts ESET in the same league as our top-ranked antiviruses, such as TotalAV and Norton. The Custom Scan also found nearly every malware sample in the folders I specified, and the Removable Device Scan discovered all malware threats hidden on my USB drive.

All 3 of ESET’s scans were lightweight, and I didn’t notice any system slowdown during scanning. The full system scan took about 40 minutes, which is on par with Norton. And the Custom and Removable Device scans only took a few minutes to complete.

ESET’s system scan looks at areas that most competitor antiviruses skip, including your operating memory, UEFI, system registry, and WMI Repository (Windows only) — basically, the most back-end areas of your device and its firmware. Windows and macOS already include pretty good protections for these areas, but users looking for the most comprehensive threat detection will appreciate ESET’s deep system scanning.

That said, I was disappointed that ESET doesn’t have a quick scan option. Most antiviruses offer a quick scan — McAfee even has a quick scan that can check critical locations in under 2 minutes. On Mac, the scanning options are even more limited since the Removable Device Scan is missing.

It’s also not easy to schedule scans in ESET. You have to navigate through multiple windows, which is pretty confusing and unintuitive. On Mac, the scheduling is done outside the main app UI from the menu bar, which seems needlessly complicated. Most premium antiviruses allow you to schedule scans with just a few clicks straight from the dashboard, and this is an area that ESET could improve on.

ESET also contains a Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) that constantly scans your computer for ransomware and rootkits. The HIPS was really effective in my testing. I ran a ransomware simulator, and it failed to encrypt any files before ESET blocked it. I then tried installing multiple rootkit samples, which ESET quickly discovered and blocked.

Overall, ESET is excellent at protecting your device against malware, and its full scans are incredibly effective. However, it lacks a quick-scan option and includes a tedious scheduling process. Nonetheless, ESET provides one of the most thorough scans available from any antivirus. It has near-perfect malware detection, and its real-time prevention system can block ransomware and rootkits before they cause any damage.

Web Protection — Protects Against Dangerous Websites on Windows

ESET offers 3 tools to protect you from web-based threats. The first functions from within ESET to alert you to suspicious websites. On Windows, it was generally effective in my tests, but it sometimes flagged websites that were safe. On Mac, however, it failed to block access to several phishing sites. Also, it’s clunkier than I’d like — especially when whitelisting false positives.

The second tool is a secure browser extension (Windows only). ESET Browser Privacy & Security scans websites before you can click on them, comparing them against a massive list of known suspicious sites. If it flags the website, it alerts you before you can connect. Similar to Norton and McAfee, it also adds a green tick next to safe sites on Google. I compared the results of browsing sketchy sites with a regular Edge browser versus using Edge with Browser Privacy & Security added, and I was able to connect to significantly fewer malware-ridden sites with the extension enabled.

Depending on your subscription, additional features are available, too. With the Ultimate plan, you can use the extension to easily manage your website permissions, clear your browser data, and remove metadata from your browser. While you can do most of that from your browser, I found ESET’s extension made it considerably more convenient, but you need to have the ESET app installed for the extension to work and an adequate subscription active.

Finally, the Safe Banking & Browsing feature opens a secure, green-rimmed version of your default browser when launched from the ESET dashboard. It offers an additional layer of security when you’re banking or shopping online, protecting you from keyloggers. ESET will also automatically launch Safe Banking once it detects you’re on a banking website.

Overall, ESET’s web protection features are comprehensive and well-functioning on Windows but seriously lacking on Mac.