Norton vs Bitdefender vs McAfee: Prices and Features Compared

Norton, Bitdefender, and McAfee all sell multi-device security suites that bundle antivirus with a VPN, a password manager, and some flavor of identity or dark-web monitoring — but the sticker price you see on each vendor's homepage is almost never what you'll pay after the first year. Bitdefender Total Security starts at $59.99 for one year on five devices; Norton 360 Deluxe starts lower, at $29.99, but renews at $124.99; McAfee's equivalent tier is McAfee Total Protection, and all three matched each other with a perfect 18/18 score in independent lab testing this spring. Here's how the three actually compare on price, platform coverage, and what's in the box.

Norton vs Bitdefender vs McAfee at a Glance

All three vendors protect Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices from a single subscription, and all three push you toward a multi-device "suite" tier rather than a single-PC antivirus product. The table below lines up the mid-tier plan most shoppers actually buy — the one that covers a handful of devices and adds a VPN and identity extras on top of core antivirus.

*McAfee's official pricing page returned an access error every time we tried to load it while researching this piece, so we are not printing a specific dollar figure we couldn't confirm ourselves. **Feature inclusion for McAfee's current tiers is based on the product's long-standing public positioning rather than a page we were able to load directly — treat it as a starting point, not a confirmed spec, and check mcafee.com before buying.

Pricing and Plans Compared

Norton sells a ladder of four consumer tiers. Norton's current 360 lineup starts with Norton AntiVirus Plus at $19.99 for the first year (renews at $59.99) covering one device, then steps up through Norton 360 Standard ($24.99 first year, renews $94.99, 3 devices) and Norton 360 Deluxe ($29.99 first year, renews $124.99, 5 devices) to Norton 360 with LifeLock Select ($99.99 first year, renews $189.99, 10 devices), which adds credit monitoring and identity-theft coverage on top of the security suite.

Bitdefender's structure is simpler and splits by account type rather than by feature tier alone. Bitdefender Total Security costs $59.99 for one year on an individual plan (1 account, 5 devices) or $79.99 for a family plan (5 accounts, 25 devices), with two-year terms available at $119.99 and $159.99 respectively. Step up to Bitdefender Premium Security — $79.99 individual / $99.99 family for the first year — and the capped VPN becomes unlimited, which is the single biggest functional difference between Bitdefender's two main suites.

McAfee sells its consumer suite under the McAfee+ and McAfee Total Protection branding, tiered roughly as Essential, Premium, Advanced, and Ultimate. We were unable to load McAfee's own pricing page during research for this article — every attempt returned an access-denied response — so we are not repeating specific dollar figures we couldn't verify first-hand. What we can confirm from McAfee's official 2022 product announcement is the shape of the lineup: McAfee's announcement introducing the McAfee+ lineup described a suite built around Personal Data Cleanup, credit monitoring, and identity-theft and stolen-funds coverage layered on top of antivirus — the same general territory as Norton's LifeLock-branded tier. Whether the exact coverage amounts and prices from that 2022 launch still apply in 2026 is something you'll need to confirm directly on mcafee.com, since pricing and coverage limits on identity products change frequently across the industry.

Honesty check on pricing: Norton's and Bitdefender's own pages are explicit that first-year pricing is promotional and renews higher — Norton discloses the exact renewal price on the checkout page (as shown in the table above), while Bitdefender states plainly that "the price offered is valid for the first year of subscription. After that, your subscription will be billed at the applicable renewal price which may be higher than the initial purchase price." Assume the same is true of McAfee, since introductory-then-higher-renewal pricing is standard across the whole consumer antivirus category, but we can't quote you McAfee's specific numbers without a source we could actually verify.

Platform Coverage: Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS

On paper, coverage is a wash: Norton, Bitdefender, and McAfee all protect Windows PCs, Macs, Android phones and tablets, and iPhones/iPads from a single subscription, and all three let you mix device types freely under one device count rather than requiring separate Windows-only or Mac-only licenses. The practical differences show up in device counts, not platforms — Norton's entry-level AntiVirus Plus plan covers just one device, Norton 360 Standard covers three, and both Norton 360 Deluxe and Bitdefender's base plans cover five. If you need to protect a larger household, Bitdefender's family plans (25 devices) and Norton 360 with LifeLock Select (10 devices) go further than either vendor's base tier.

Mobile protection tends to be lighter-weight than desktop protection across the category, since iOS in particular restricts what any security app can do at the operating-system level — expect web-protection and Wi-Fi-security features on phones rather than full on-device malware scanning, especially on iPhone.

What's Included: VPN, Firewall, Password Manager, and More

All three vendors bundle a VPN and a password manager into their mid-tier and higher suites, but the details differ. Bitdefender's password manager is described as fully featured across every plan and platform; Norton includes a password manager starting with its entry-level AntiVirus Plus tier. If you'd rather run a password manager independently of whichever antivirus you pick, our side-by-side look at Bitwarden, 1Password, and Proton Pass covers that market on its own.

VPN inclusion is where the suites diverge most clearly. Norton's 360 tiers include VPN access without a stated data cap. Bitdefender Total Security's VPN is capped at 200 MB of traffic per device per day — enough for checking email on public Wi-Fi, not for streaming or heavy browsing — while Bitdefender Premium Security removes that cap entirely and includes "3,000+ VPN servers in 100+ countries" as an unlimited service. If an always-on, uncapped VPN matters more to you than bundling it with antivirus, it's worth comparing these suite VPNs against dedicated options in our ExpressVPN vs. Surfshark vs. Proton VPN comparison.

Firewall protection is a standard part of each vendor's Windows and Mac clients, layered on top of the OS-level firewall rather than replacing antivirus scanning. Beyond the core bundle, Bitdefender adds ransomware and cryptomining protection plus scam and phishing filtering across its tiers, and its family plans include internet time limits, content filtering, and location tracking for parental control. Norton 360 Deluxe adds parental controls and a privacy monitor on top of the Standard tier's feature set.

Dark Web and Identity Monitoring

Norton 360 Standard and every tier above it include Dark Web Monitoring, and the LifeLock-branded top tier extends that into full identity-theft protection: Social Security and credit alerts, one-bureau credit monitoring, stolen-wallet protection, and reimbursement of up to $25,000 in stolen funds. Bitdefender's equivalent is "Data Breach Detection," which checks whether your information has surfaced in a known breach and is explicitly described as available on Android and iOS in Bitdefender's Total Security materials, with a broader "email breach check" folded into Premium Security. McAfee's product line has, since its 2022 relaunch, been built around Personal Data Cleanup and identity-theft coverage as headline features, though as noted above we couldn't confirm the current 2026 coverage limits directly. Whichever suite you use for ongoing monitoring, it's still worth periodically checking whether your own accounts have already turned up in a public breach — our guide to checking Have I Been Pwned for your own accounts walks through that separately from any paid subscription.

Cloud Backup and Other Extras

Cloud backup is a Norton-specific feature among these three: Norton 360 Standard includes 2 GB and Norton 360 Deluxe steps that up to 50 GB, marketed as ransomware insurance for irreplaceable files rather than a full backup replacement. Neither Bitdefender Total Security nor Bitdefender Premium Security lists cloud backup as an included feature on their official product pages. Norton also markets "Deepfake Protection" and "Scam Protection" starting at its entry AntiVirus Plus tier, reflecting a broader industry shift toward AI-generated-scam detection that all three vendors are racing to build out.

Independent Lab Test Results

Pricing and feature lists only tell you what a vendor promises; independent testing labs measure whether the antivirus engine actually catches malware without slowing your PC to a crawl or throwing constant false alarms. AV-TEST, a German independent testing institute, evaluates consumer security products on three axes — Protection, Performance, and Usability — each scored out of 6 points for a maximum of 18. In AV-TEST's May–June 2026 Windows 11 home-user report, Norton 360 (version 26.4/26.5) scored a perfect 18/18 and earned AV-TEST's "Top Product" certification. In the same test cycle's Bitdefender Total Security report, Bitdefender (version 27.0) also scored 18/18. And in AV-TEST's report on McAfee Total Protection (version 1.37), McAfee matched both rivals with 18/18, including 100% real-world zero-day detection in both May and June.

This is a third-party, independently run test — not a claim from any of the three vendors — and it's worth being explicit that a tied perfect score across all three doesn't mean the products are identical: AV-TEST's methodology tests a specific product version on a specific Windows build over a specific two-month window, so a tie in this cycle isn't a permanent guarantee, and each vendor ships new engine versions regularly. Treat it as evidence that all three are currently competent, mainstream-grade antivirus engines rather than as a tiebreaker on its own.

Honesty Check: What We Could and Couldn't Verify

To be transparent about the limits of this comparison: Norton's and Bitdefender's pricing, device counts, and feature lists in this article came directly from their own current product and pricing pages, including Norton's stated renewal prices and Bitdefender's own disclosure that its promotional price is a first-year rate only. McAfee's official site was not accessible to us while researching this piece — every attempt to load its pricing and product pages returned an access-denied or server error response — so any specific McAfee price you see elsewhere (including on review sites) should be double-checked against mcafee.com directly before you buy, and we've deliberately avoided repeating unverified numbers here. The AV-TEST scores above are the one place all three vendors are compared on genuinely equal, independently verified footing.

Norton vs Bitdefender vs McAfee: Which Should You Choose?

If your main goal is the lowest possible first-year price on a handful of devices and you're comfortable setting a calendar reminder before the renewal charge hits, Norton 360 Standard or Deluxe are the cheapest entry points among these three. If an uncapped VPN matters more than saving a few dollars up front, Bitdefender Premium Security is the only suite here that includes unlimited VPN traffic without an add-on purchase. If you specifically want built-in cloud backup, Norton is currently the only one of the three that includes it. If identity theft and credit monitoring are your priority, Norton 360 with LifeLock Select has the most fully documented identity package of the three, with McAfee historically competing in the same space — confirm its current terms directly on mcafee.com before assuming its coverage matches Norton's. And on raw malware-catching ability, this spring's AV-TEST results give you no reason to rule any of the three out: all three currently earn a perfect protection score. Whichever you choose, read the renewal price before you enter your card number — it's the number that actually determines what this subscription costs you in year two.

Written bySana Qureshi

Sana Qureshi runs the security and privacy desk. She reports on actively exploited vulnerabilities, vendor patches and data breaches, and covers the password managers, VPNs and authentication tools readers use to protect themselves. Her alerts cite vendor advisories, CISA and the CVE record directly.

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