Throughout the year, independent testing labs run antivirus products through the rigors of “real-world’ testings as well as simulations and testing of specific features and performance. avast! Free Antivirus was honored as the Top Rated Program of 2013 by one of the most respected antivirus testing labs. Tests during 2013 were carried out on 22 consumer antivirus and internet security products. AVAST always puts our free product up against our competitor’s paid-for products because we are confident that the technology can stand up to the competition. The honors we received validate that.

Explaining the reasoning behind pitting a free antivirus product against paid-for suites, AVAST Software co-founder, Eduard Kučera said, “Our philosophy is we should not be a good product, but a perfect product. We provide the community with a perfect product.”

AV-Comparatives awards given to avast! Free Antivirus in 2013

• Top Rated Program of 2013 avast! Free Antivirus proves that it protects against real-world internet threats, it identifies thousands of recent malicious programs, and provides protection without slowing down the PC. See (PDF).
• A good file detection rate is still one of the most important, deterministic and reliable features of an antivirus product. See (PDF).
• avast! Free Antivirus not only provides high detection rates and good protection against malware, but it also does not degrade system performance or trouble users. See (PDF).
• Advanced Plus Real-World Protection Test, July 2013 avast! Free Antivirus passed the tests with honors and was the only free solution to receive the Advanced+ rating! See (PDF).
• Advanced Heuristic/Behavioral Test, August 2013 See (PDF).
• See (PDF).
• Good malware protection is important to find existing malware that is already on the system. avast! Free Antivirus earned the Advanced Plus rating for successfully removing malware from an already infected system. See (PDF).
• avast! Free Antivirus has negligible impact on system performance performed on an up-to-date Windows 8 64-Bit system. See (PDF).
• Advanced Plus Real-World Protection Test, December 2013 avast! Free Antivirus was the only free product to receive AV-Comparatives highest award in the ADVANCED Plus category because of exemplary results in protecting against malicious samples with a small incidence of false positives. See (PDF).
• Silver Best Overall Speed 2013
• Bronze Real-World Protection Test 2013

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Source: blog.avast.com