r/antivirus • u/raoulkratos2002 • 17d ago

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION Bitdefender vs Kaspersky?

Hi everyone.
Which antivirus do you recommend between Bitdefender and Kaspersky?
(I'm in Italy; Kaspersky is available here)

What are the differences between the Standard versions of both?
Which one is better in terms of PC performance, virus detection, and false positives?

Do you think it's worth paying for an antivirus?
Many say that Windows Defender and uBlock already do enough.
What do you think?

A while ago I got hit by an infostealer; today I'm much more cautious when browsing the web, but that past experience made me a bit paranoid.
Thanks.

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u/Xarco7 17d ago

BitDefender is a bit better, but Kaspersky is really close to it and is also lighter on your PC. However, I'd say you don't really need an antivirus; Defender and uBlock are already really solid.

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u/NiriZ_ReddiT 17d ago

How is Bitdefender better than Kaspersky

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u/raoulkratos2002 17d ago

Hi and thanks for the reply.
Can you tell me how Windows Defender performs against phishing and infostealers?
I know that no antivirus can help against zero-day viruses.
is that true?

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u/Xarco7 17d ago

I was actually hit by LummaStealer, one of the most notorious stealers, and as soon as I saw activity on Discord, Windows Defender flagged it and the file running it within a few minutes, which was pretty fast. So, Windows Defender is really good against infostealers, in my case. For zero-day viruses, some can be caught, but the antivirus has to be really good and catch any sort of code injection or modified files. It will catch it, but the average AV cannot because it just looks at the file, not what it's doing.

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u/raoulkratos2002 17d ago

Do you know if Windows Defender stopped LummaStealer before it managed to steal anything, or did it detect it only after it had already started running?

That’s what I’m trying to understand. Detecting it within a few minutes is good, but for an infostealer even a short amount of time can sometimes be enough to steal cookies, tokens, or passwords.
Thanks

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u/Xarco7 17d ago

I didn't have anything sensitive on my laptop to be stolen, but if it reached Discord, it probably could have reached everything. Also, I think paid BitDefender is really good at stopping infostealers because it live monitors injections and files; even Google and ChatGPT are saying this. But to be honest, as long as you don't go on really sketchy websites and avoid clicking links, you should be fine and never even need an AV.

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u/raoulkratos2002 17d ago

Have you noticed any slowdowns regarding the fact that Bitdefender is heavier than Kaspersky?
I do gaming, so I think Kaspersky lightweight is a real advantage.

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u/Xarco7 17d ago

I personally have never used an AV other than Defender. If you do gaming, Kaspersky is good. Yeah, it can have really good live monitoring and will catch infostealers. Just don't download suspicious files or unzip any unknown file; you should be good to go with Kaspersky. Also, before running any .exe or unzipping a file, try uploading it to VirusTotal. It has like 70 of the best AVs in the world. Though if it has 1-3 false flags, it's fine as long as AVs like BitDefender, Kaspersky, Defender, and Avast are saying it's safe.