McAfee Review 2026: Solid Protection, Mediocre Performance

8.1 / 10

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McAfee Antivirus

$40 at McAfee

Score Breakdown

Performance 6/10Security 8/10Customer Support 9/10Usability 9/10Value 8/10Features 9/10

Pros

• Unlimited device coverage
• Online account cleanup tool
• Identity monitoring and insurance are available internationally

Cons

• Outrageous resource usage during scans
• No email support
• Slow VPN

McAfee antivirus software has protected many devices since its founding in 1987, becoming one of the most recognizable names in digital security. Today, McAfee offers numerous cybersecurity tools -- including a password manager -- and privacy-enhancing tools, such as Online Account Cleanup. You can even get identity monitoring and identity theft insurance through McAfee’s comprehensive cybersecurity suites. I spent several days testing most of these features to determine how well McAfee’s tools protect you.

My results were mixed. McAfee’s antivirus provides good real-time protection and effective scans, but those scans use an enormous amount of CPU power and memory. Full (deep) scans are also quite slow, especially when compared to similar scans run with software such as Bitdefender and Norton. 

McAfee’s Online Account Cleanup, Personal Data Cleanup and other tools for monitoring and controlling how your data is used online are a pleasure to use, but the WebAdvisor browser extension is utterly ineffective. The VPN was also severely disappointing, though this is common among VPNs from antivirus-first companies; we generally recommend using a standalone VPN for both privacy and consistent performance.

These mixed results make McAfee a less-than-ideal choice for most people, but McAfee does have one major benefit: All McAfee Plus plans cover unlimited devices. This makes McAfee a great choice for those with numerous devices. You may also want to choose McAfee if your primary concern is controlling where and how your data is used online and consider the antivirus just a bonus feature.

McAfee antivirus features, plans and pricing

McAfee’s antivirus offers real-time protection, manual malware scans and scan scheduling. You can purchase the antivirus as part of a cybersecurity suite with additional protections including a VPN, password manager, scam detector and tools for personal data cleanup. Some plans also include identity theft protection tools, including up to $2 million of identity theft insurance for people with significant assets. These features are fairly similar to what you’ll get in cybersecurity suites from other top antivirus companies such as Malwarebytes and Bitdefender.

The main standout feature of McAfee+ is the Online Account Cleanup tool. which makes it easy to delete old accounts, which is helpful for folks like me who’ve lost track of where we’ve been and what we’ve done online. Bitdefender has a similar tool, but it’s not as effective, and Norton’s comparable tool is only available through an add-on.

The other benefit of McAfee is that its plans offer coverage for unlimited devices. Other top antivirus companies like Malwarebytes and Bitdefender limit the number of devices you can protect on individual plans -- Malwarebytes’ default is three, and Bitdefender’s limit is five -- which can be problematic for individuals with large numbers of devices. Norton has plans for up to 10 devices, but it doesn’t provide the same level of identity theft insurance as McAfee, so it’s not great for those who have both numerous devices and significant assets to protect.

McAfee Basic

Built for folks with only one device and fundamental security needs, McAfee’s Basic plan includes antivirus protection and other simple tools such as McAfee Protection Score, which evaluates your security and gives you tips to improve it. You’ll also get Scam Detector for trying to identify suspicious messages and links, plus basic identity monitoring and alerts. McAfee’s VPN is also included, though we don’t recommend using it because it lacks advanced privacy features including obfuscated servers and causes significant internet speed loss.

The inclusion of tools beyond antivirus makes McAfee Basic more appealing on the surface than other companies’ basic plans, which typically only include the antivirus. This is especially true since this plan starts at $30 for the first year, in line with most other companies’ lowest-cost plans. However, this rises to $90 per year on renewal, so the long-term cost means you’re not saving anything on these additional features.

McAfee Essential

For folks seeking foundational antivirus protection with more than one device, McAfee Essential is a great choice. You'll get antivirus protection, a VPN, a scam detector, web protection and identity monitoring alerts. It's a similar feature set to McAfee's Basic package, but offers protection for up to five devices.

McAfee Essential covers up to five devices for $40 in the first year and $120 per year after.

McAfee Plus Premium

If you’re concerned about your digital footprint and willing to put in the work to clean it up yourself, McAfee Plus Premium is for you. You’ll get everything from Basic, plus scanning tools for personal data cleanup -- which searches data broker sites for your information -- and online account management -- which finds every online account connected to your email address. These tools will give you all of the information you need to send out your own data removal and account closure requests.

The individual version of McAfee Plus Premium costs $50 for the first year and $150 per year on renewal, with coverage for one person and unlimited devices. The family version costs $70 for the first year ($170 per year after) and protects up to six individuals.

McAfee Plus Advanced

Ideal for people with significant privacy concerns and moderate assets, McAfee Plus Advanced includes full-service personal data cleanup, where you can ask McAfee to submit data removal requests to people-finder sites, data broker sites and other sites that have collected your data without your permission on your behalf. You’ll also get basic identity theft protection, credit monitoring and identity theft insurance of up to $1 million.

The individual version of McAfee Plus Advanced offers protection for one user with unlimited devices and costs $90 for the first year and $200 per year on renewal. You can extend coverage to six individuals by purchasing the family version for $120 in the first year and $270 per year after.

McAfee Plus Ultimate

McAfee Plus Ultimate expands identity theft protection for people with significant assets, adding advanced credit monitoring, investment monitoring, payday loan monitoring and credit lock. The identity theft insurance increases to $2 million on this plan, with additional ransomware insurance of up to $25,000. And, for those who’ve been online for a while, there’s full-service online account cleanup, where McAfee will send account closure requests on your behalf.

The individual version of McAfee Plus Ultimate starts at $200 for the first year and rises to $280 per year on renewal, with coverage for one individual and unlimited devices. You can get protection for up to six people with the family version of McAfee Plus Ultimate, priced at $250 in the first year and $425 per year afterward.

McAfee antivirus usability: Intuitive account and antivirus management

I tested two areas of McAfee to determine its ease of use:

• Account navigation: How easy it is to find the download and setup options for all tools.
• Antivirus installation and navigation: How easy it is to put the software on my device and run or schedule scans.

Both the account navigation and the antivirus itself proved easy to set up, with intuitive processes for even the least technically inclined among us. The only mild hiccup was the lack of a quick-scan button in the main antivirus area.

Account navigation

I signed up for an account with McAfee and was prompted to download the antivirus, with the option to send download links to additional devices. I loved how straightforward this was, but was disappointed that McAfee didn’t direct me to my account dashboard once I’d sent the installation link to all of my devices. Instead, I had to manually return to the main McAfee site and log in.

The account dashboard is largely intuitive, displaying various McAfee products associated with my subscription. Every display includes a link to set up or manage the relevant tool. The sidebar is heavily streamlined, with links to the account dashboard and McAfee’s Protection Score, plus a My Protection link that opens a secondary sidebar linking to every McAfee product.

The one thing that wasn’t immediately obvious was how to change my subscription. I had to click the Account link in the top-right corner and select Manage Account, then navigate to the Subscriptions page to view these settings. Furthermore, the Subscriptions page only gave me options for updating my payment information and enabling auto-renewal. I had to contact McAfee customer support to cancel the subscription. I had similar issues with Bitdefender and Malwarebytes, so this is common, but cancellation is easier with some programs such as Norton.

Installation and setup

Installing McAfee is simple, requiring just a couple of clicks and roughly two minutes. McAfee then prompts you to choose between a guided process or figuring it out on your own. I chose the guided process, which directed me to activate the VPN and a couple of other additional tools before sending me to the software’s main screen.

This main screen has a similar layout to the website account dashboard, showing the status of various McAfee products, including the antivirus, firewall and VPN. Clearly labelled links make it easy to enable or manage these tools. The minimalist sidebar includes a Protection Score icon and a tab to open the full list of desktop-based McAfee tools, so everything is accessible without being overwhelming.

My only problem here is the lack of a quick scan button. You need to click on the arrow beside your antivirus status to open the scan area. Thankfully, once you’re here, everything is simple, with a prominent button for running a quick scan, plus smaller but still obvious links to other scan types and scan scheduling options.

Installing and using the McAfee Android app was also straightforward, requiring just a few clicks to connect to my account and give McAfee permissions to scan my device. The app dashboard includes a Smart scan button in the top-right corner, making it more convenient than the desktop app. There are also large buttons for activating the Scam Detector, VPN and Safe Browsing tools.

McAfee antivirus performance

My next step was testing McAfee’s performance, focused on two things: background performance (how McAfee’s real-time protection impacted my device’s functionality) and active scan performance (how fast scans were and what level of computer resources they used).

McAfee ran smoothly in the background between scans, using minimal resources without interfering with my regular activities. However, active scans used significantly more CPU power and memory than scans run with any other antivirus tool I’ve tested. Full scans also took much longer than deep scans run with other antivirus software, suggesting that McAfee is significantly less efficient than tools such as Bitdefender, Malwarebytes or Norton.

Note: I ran these tests on a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad with an Intel i5 processor and around 50GB of files, mostly photos and images, on the hard drive. Performance may vary depending on your setup and the amount of storage you’re using. Conversely, Android tests were conducted on a roughly 5-year-old Motorola G Stylus, so you may experience faster scan performance using the McAfee Android app if you have a newer phone.

Background performance

I ran McAfee in the background for two days while performing various everyday tasks including checking my email, scrolling through Facebook and editing images. McAfee didn’t noticeably slow my computer down or interfere with any of these tasks. Task Manager showed that McAfee was using 0% of my CPU power and around 300MB of memory, suggesting that it won’t interfere with higher-resource tasks such as video editing and gaming.

These results are fairly similar to the background resource usage of our top-ranking tools, Bitdefender (which used 0.2% of CPU power and 500MB of memory) and Malwarebytes (which used 0.1% of CPU power and 132MB of memory). This makes McAfee’s background performance pretty average, rather than being a major selling point.

Active scan performance

I ran several McAfee scans over four days and was shocked by the high level of resources, such as CPU power, it used. The first full scan also took almost five hours, much longer than the 20 to 35 minutes of initial deep scans run with tools such as Bitdefender and Malwarebytes. Follow-up scans were much faster, but still used massive amounts of CPU power -- 40% to 70% -- so you shouldn’t run McAfee scans while doing high-resource activities such as video editing.

McAfee has a Fast scanning setting that allows it to use a higher percentage of computer resources to complete scans in a shorter period of time. I ran three quick scans with this setting enabled, with each one taking around two minutes. McAfee’s not kidding about this setting using a lot of resources though: Task Manager showed McAfee using 80% to 85% of my CPU power during this time.

I turned off Fast scanning and ran three more quick scans. Unfortunately, these scans still used a high percentage of my CPU power, ranging between 40% and 60%. This is much more than the 5% to 8% of CPU power Bitdefender and Malwarebytes used during similar scans. The scans took between three and five minutes, which isn’t a long time to pause your other tasks, but it definitely means you shouldn’t be running scans while you’re gaming or working on resource-intensive tasks.

Next, I tested the “Full scan” feature, McAfee’s equivalent to a deep scan. I had already disabled Fast scanning, so I kept it off during my first three tests. This might have been a mistake, as the first scan took roughly five hours and still used between 30% and 70% of my CPU resources. Memory usage was also high, ranging from 1,600 to 2,000MB. These numbers were appalling when compared to the 3% to 10% CPU power and 60MB to 215MB of memory used by software suc as Bitdefender and Malwarebytes during comparable scans.

A contact at McAfee explained that the first full scan takes so long because it digs deep into every file, folder and the overall infrastructure of your computer. Further scans focus on new files, so they’re faster, but my next two full scans still took 45 minutes -- much longer than the three to five minutes of my Bitdefender follow-up scans or the 30 to 35 minutes of my Malwarebytes follow-up scans. McAfee’s slow speed was made even more frustrating by the continued strain on my CPU and memory, which limited what I could do while running a scan.

I switched on Fast scanning and ran another set of full scans. CPU usage shot up to 90%, bouncing between that and a lower 70% during the first scan. Memory usage was lower than it was during scans without Fast scanning enabled, but at around 400MB, it was still higher than Bitdefender’s or Malwarebytes’s memory usage during similar scans. Fast scanning at least seemed to make a difference here, though, as the scan only took 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, subsequent full scans had inconsistent results. The second full scan with Fast scanning enabled -- performed after downloading five small images -- took almost an hour and still used 70% to 90% of my CPU power. I didn’t download anything else before running the final test scan, and it only took around 20 minutes. This demonstrates that the timeframe of McAfee’s full scans varies widely and can be severely impacted by your behavior between scans.

With my desktop tests complete, I moved on to scanning my phone with the Android app. The Smart scan option searched my device for viruses and searched the internet for identity threats. This took less than a minute, though the first scan may take longer if you haven’t already set up identity monitoring through your desktop browser.

I then ran three full scans using the dedicated antivirus tab. The first one took four minutes -- longer than the one- to two-minute scans I ran on the Bitdefender and Malwarebytes apps, but still reasonable. The second and third scans, however, took only two minutes each, suggesting that the first one was slower because McAfee hadn’t yet familiarized itself with my device. So, while your initial scan might take a while, the long-term performance of McAfee’s Android app is similar to competitors.

Usability and performance of additional tools: Great data cleanup tools, mediocre privacy tools

McAfee has various cybersecurity tools, including a Scam Detector, WebAdvisor plugin, multiple data cleanup tools and a VPN. I tested most of them and found their helpfulness highly variable. The Online Account Cleanup and Personal Data Cleanup tools were efficient and effective, while the Scam Detector didn’t do much at all, and the VPN dramatically slowed down my internet. Based on these difficulties, I recommend Malwarebytes or Bitdefender if you’re looking for a cybersecurity suite with robust protection beyond antivirus.

Scam Detector

McAfee’s Scam Detector says it scans your emails, text messages and phone calls for signs of scams. Enabling this feature on my phone and email only took a few clicks. However, I was alarmed when McAfee asked for permission not just to scan my emails, but actually edit them.

Despite my concerns, I gave Scam Detector the requested permissions to ensure that I could conduct thorough testing. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any evidence of this tool working. There were no labels on my emails or text messages to indicate they had been scanned, and nothing was blocked beyond the scams Google already filtered into my spam folder. This leaves me uncertain of how -- or if -- it’s working. As such, I’m not certain Scam Detector is worth installing, especially after factoring in the somewhat concerning permissions.

WebAdvisor plugin

McAfee’s WebAdvisor extension claims to secure your browsing experience by scanning links and other content for signs of danger. I installed it on Firefox and was immediately concerned about the amount of data it asked to collect, which includes URLs of all websites I visited and any websites that showed up in my search results. This level of data collection is essential for running links through a database of blacklisted/known problematic domains, but it’s still alarming -- especially since this page doesn’t include any reassurances about anonymization.

There is a link to the privacy policy, where McAfee clarifies that data is anonymized and disconnected from your account, which alleviated most of my concerns. However, I dislike that this information isn’t included on the page asking for permissions, and the lack of clarity around how data’s anonymized leaves me with some lingering worry.

I activated WebAdvisor despite my concerns and spent a few hours wandering the interwebs. I immediately noticed its presence in Google search results, providing green checkmarks on links it deemed safe -- similar to those found in Norton Safe Search.

All of the results in my first few searches were deemed safe, so I went out of my way to search for something likely to return suspicious results. WebAdvisor marked these links with a gray question mark, which I clicked on to see disclaimers including “potential illegal software” and “P2P/file sharing”. There are supposedly yellow and red icons next to known problematic websites, but I didn’t find any sites that triggered those warnings.

I didn’t notice any other changes to my browsing while using WebAdvisor, leaving me uncertain of how consistently -- or effectively -- it scans data outside of search engines. I also didn’t see any signs of it blocking trackers or ads like I did with the Bitdefender and Malwarebytes safe browsing extensions.

The good news is that WebAdvisor didn’t interfere with my browser speed or interface in any notable way. However, it also didn’t provide enough benefit for me to consider it worthwhile, especially considering the potential privacy concerns.

Password manager

McAfee’s password manager, True Key, is a pretty straightforward browser extension. You install it on your browser, give it permission to scan and store your passwords and it will automatically save passwords as you create or use them. True Key can also generate secure passwords with a single click when you’re signing up for new services. 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a way to bulk import passwords, which could be frustrating for people looking to quickly switch password managers. The password managers from Bitdefender and Norton do allow bulk imports, giving them a significant advantage over McAfee’s password manager.

Social Privacy Manager

The Social Privacy Manager is a browser extension that connects to popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Once connected, the Social Privacy Manager scans your settings -- a process which took around three minutes for me -- and recommends changes. For example, mine suggested turning off all ad tracking and personalization settings on Facebook. I liked these suggestions, and the tool’s overall functionality, but there’s a catch: Social Privacy Manager is only available for Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Online Account Cleanup

Accessed through the McAfee account dashboard in your browser, the Online Account Cleanup tool is my favorite thing about McAfee’s cybersecurity suite. Getting started is as simple as entering your email address into the system and giving McAfee permission to connect to your email software. The scan starts immediately and takes around five minutes. Mine turned up 77 results, categorized into high risk accounts, unused/rarely used accounts and accounts with access to my financial information.

The Online Account Cleanup tool didn’t stop there, either. It continued scanning the internet and, when I refreshed the page an hour later, had found a full 455 accounts for me to go through. This number might seem outrageous, but it makes sense when you realize I’ve been using this email account for 20 years and have been pretty blasé about signing up for things in the past.

McAfee’s categorization system reduces some of the overwhelm you might face if you have a similar number of accounts, allowing you to start with the smallest category or the one you consider most important. Each page also highlights three accounts for you to start with:

Clicking on an account opens a box where you can see more information about the account -- including the types of information you’ve likely shared in this account -- and can choose to either keep it or delete it. Both options will remove it from the list.

Bitdefender’s Digital Footprint has similar functionality, but it doesn’t separate companies you’ve submitted data (such as your email address for a newsletter subscription) to and sites you’ve created accounts with. It also doesn’t give you any risk level indicators or other tools to help you prioritize sites to remove your information from, making it much more frustrating to use than McAfee’s Online Account Cleanup.

Personal Data Cleanup

The Personal Data Cleanup tool searches data broker sites for your information. All you need to do is enter your name, email address, birth date and home address, and McAfee will immediately start searching for your data. The scan took around five minutes, found one breach and automatically requested removal. However, I’m actually not sure it found an instance of my data being misused, as the site listed a Dianna Gunn with a different middle name from mine.

Personal Data Cleanup continuously scans the web for your information, so I checked it again after a weekend and found no new alerts. I was mildly surprised by this -- I haven’t always been as deliberate about cybersecurity as I should have been -- but it’s difficult to say whether McAfee’s program isn’t finding my data or my data simply isn’t on many data broker sites, especially since I had a similar issue with Norton’s privacy monitoring tool.

Identity Monitoring

McAfee’s Identity Monitoring system can be connected to email addresses, phone numbers, credit cards, bank accounts and various types of ID. I entered my primary email address and McAfee immediately started scanning the dark web for it, identifying 49 data breaches in less than two minutes.

Clicking on a breach gave me advice for how to deal with the breach, such as updating the relevant password, and how to protect myself in the future. Most of these tips are common-sense things including not reusing passwords, but they may be valuable for people with minimal digital literacy. This is pretty similar to the dark web alerts I received when testing Bitdefender and Malwarebytes.

VPN

Like most antivirus companies, McAfee has a VPN that theoretically protects your privacy by disguising your IP address while you surf the web. However, it lacks advanced privacy features common to the dedicated VPNs we usually recommend, such as obfuscated servers. Other features, such as split tunneling, are limited to some apps, like Android and iOS versions of McAfee’s VPN. Note that iOS split tunneling only works at the website level, not the app level -- so you can have granular control over what websites use your VPN connection, but not over apps. In short, you may not want to use McAfee’s VPN if you have anything beyond the most mild of privacy concerns.

Still, McAfee’s VPN had the potential to be a nice bonus for folks seeking a VPN for casual uses such as viewing region-locked Netflix shows. I set out to determine how effective it would be for these purposes by measuring how much it impacted my internet speed when set to various locations around the globe. Unfortunately, my results weren’t great: McAfee’s VPN had an overall speed loss rate of 46%, higher than our recommended 25% or even the 30% to 40% slow-down I’ve experienced with most of the VPNs I’ve tested from other antivirus companies.

My VPN testing process started with running three Ookla speed tests to establish my default internet speed. These tests revealed an average download speed of 536.88Mbps and an average upload speed of 874.92Mbps.

I then enabled McAfee’s VPN and set it to my fastest server, which was located in Canada (McAfee did not specify where in Canada). While I expected some level of slowdown -- a VPN will almost always reduce your internet speed -- I was surprised by how dramatic it was, with my download speed going down to 354.68Mbps and my upload speed shrinking to 198.25Mbps. This contrasted sharply against the Bitdefender and Malwarebytes VPNs, both of which actually caused slight improvements to my internet speed during testing.

I moved on to testing McAfee’s VPN servers in several countries, watching with a sinking heart as my internet speed steadily decreased:

These numbers show that McAfee’s VPN is a poor choice for speed and that it lacks key privacy features. You’d be better off choosing Malwarebytes or Bitdefender for a casual-use VPN bundled with antivirus software. However, these VPNs still have higher speed loss than we recommend and lack advanced privacy features, so we suggest purchasing a separate VPN such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Proton VPN, Surfshark or Mullvad. If you need a VPN for privacy and absolutely want to bundle security software, consider one of the best VPNs with antivirus.

McAfee antivirus security: Excellent antivirus, potentially concerning privacy policies

I combed through McAfee’s third-party lab tests, security policies and privacy policies to figure out how well it protects those using its services. The third-party lab tests were great, with McAfee outperforming our top-ranking antivirus, Bitdefender, in some protection categories. However, the VPN’s no-logs policy can’t be verified because the third-party audit isn’t public. McAfee’s privacy policy also contains extensive provisions for sharing your data with outside companies, including social media platforms, which may be concerning for the privacy-focused.

Antivirus

McAfee has reliably earned a six out of six security ranking from AV-Test since mid-2020. AV Comparatives also found that McAfee had a 99.3% online detection rate and a 100% online protection rate in March 2025. This puts it slightly ahead of our top-ranking antivirus, Bitdefender, which had a 98.8% online detection rate and a 99.99% online protection rate -- though I still prefer Bitdefender for its consistently low resource usage.

Unfortunately, McAfee’s offline detection rate dropped significantly, to 87.3%. Most antivirus companies tested by AV-Comparatives had a lower offline detection rate -- Malwarebytes’ offline detection rate was 94.7%, lower than its 98.8% online detection rate -- but McAfee’s 11% drop is more significant than competitors’. This suggests that McAfee may not be as effective at scanning files on USB keys or external hard drives as it is at scanning files from the internet.

Security for additional tools

McAfee uses the industry-standard AES-256 encryption method to protect all passwords saved in True Key. Multi-factor verification, which ties your account to secondary factors like biometric data or codes sent to your phone via an app, can be enabled to further protect your account.

McAfee’s VPN, meanwhile, doesn’t log customers’ VPN usage or public IP addresses, so what personal information it can share with law enforcement is limited. While it's not public-facing, McAfee's VPN -- powered by the same infrastructure as the company's VPN TunnelBear -- has been audited by Cure53 in 2024 and late 2025. McAfee representatives confirmed that issues found during the 2024 audit have been addressed, while some issues from 2025 are still being corrected. 

McAfee is headquartered in the US, so it has a legal obligation to reveal your data to government agencies on request. While the no-logs policy means there shouldn’t be much to share, this may still be concerning for some. This is why you may consider VPNs headquartered outside of the 5, 9 and 14 Eyes data-sharing alliances. Still, there's a lot of nuance to VPN jurisdiction. For instance, Mullvad -- one of the most private VPNs we tested -- is headquartered in Sweden, a 14 Eyes country. But Swedish law doesn't obligate VPN providers to log user data, so your data should be safe. Accordingly, while country jurisdiction is important to consider, you'll want to understand how laws pertain to VPN companies specifically.

Privacy policies

McAfee’s extensive privacy policy shows that it gathers a lot of data about you and your device usage. While it states that this data is primarily used for training and improving McAfee software, there are some concerning clauses here. On the whole, McAfee is like a lot of antivirus companies, but its privacy policy wasn’t as reader-friendly or transparent as others, such as Bitdefender.

McAfee collects a lot of different kinds of personal data. Some of this is required for account creation or essential for providing service, but I had questions about how McAfee aggregates things such as device information while maintaining as much user privacy as possible. McAfee representatives stated: “We design our products and data practices to be very mindful of our principle to minimize the amount of personal information used or retained.” This still isn’t as transparent as I’d like, but it sounds similar to what other antivirus companies are doing.

McAfee’s representative did state that all data submitted to and collected by McAfee is encrypted with the internationally recognized TLS 1.3 and AES256/SHA384 protocols during transfer and stays encrypted with the AES-256 protocol at rest. This protects your information from hackers, but it doesn’t prevent McAfee from sharing your data with other companies -- and McAfee’s privacy policies contain provisions for sharing your information with several types of companies, including social media companies.

The privacy policy states that your data may be used for marketing purposes. Again, this part of McAfee’s policy is reminiscent of other antivirus companies’ privacy policies, but it’s certainly not the best. Where companies like Bitdefender, Malwarebytes and Norton include the names of specific companies they’ll share your information with (or tell you where to find those names), McAfee doesn’t volunteer this information. This makes it difficult to know the companies your information is available to. 

McAfee’s privacy policy further states that your data may be shared with government authorities upon request. Using the no-logs VPN would theoretically insulate you from this by reducing the amount of data McAfee has to share since your online activity while connected to the VPN shouldn’t be recorded. But our inability to access the third-party audits directly makes it difficult to guarantee this.

McAfee antivirus customer support

McAfee offers a self-serve knowledge base, 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support. I tested all of these support avenues for ease of navigation, helpfulness and, in the case of direct communication methods, response times. McAfee consistently impressed me with a well-organized knowledge base, fast live chat and even faster phone service. If your only concern is customer service, McAfee is your best choice -- but Bitdefender performed almost as well in this category and had better overall performance, so I still recommend it first.

Knowledge base

Unlike most antivirus companies, McAfee’s support area opens directly on a contact page rather than a knowledge base. In fact, its done away with the traditional help center homepage altogether; selecting Home from the menu takes you to a page featuring nothing but a search bar. You’ll have to click Help Topics in the menu to see the various categories of tutorials.

The articles themselves include a nice mix of step-by-step text instructions and images to help you visualize each step as you go. I also found a few videos, though not as many as I’d like to see. If you prefer to learn through video, I recommend Bitdefender or Norton.

Direct communication

My live chat with McAfee started the same way as most of my live chats with antivirus companies: with an AI chatbot. Thankfully, this bot redirected me to a human the first time I asked rather than making me ask four times like Bitdefender’s bot. The connection process was also fast, with a human responding in roughly two minutes, and the human I spoke to was polite and helpful, answering my questions quickly enough to wrap up the entire conversation in just under five minutes.

McAfee has specialized phone lines for many different countries. Most are available 24/7, though some, such as the Argentinian phone line, are restricted to certain hours. You can access a full list through the contact page in McAfee’s help center.

I called the Canadian number (which is available 24/7) and was connected with an agent in about a minute. They answered my questions without issue and even sent me an email with related resources in case I wanted more in-depth information. The whole conversation took around five minutes, which was technically slower than Bitdefender’s phone service but still very reasonable.

Really, the only downside of McAfee’s customer service is the lack of email support. I searched the help center thoroughly and failed to find a support ticket form or email address I could use to access this form of support.

McAfee antivirus value

McAfee plans are typically more expensive than cybersecurity suites from competitors such as Bitdefender and Malwarebytes. However, the ability to protect unlimited devices without paying additional fees justifies the cost if you have more than a few devices.

McAfee's introductory discounts are steep (they can be $100 or more), but most plans still come in at a higher cost than comparable plans from Bitdefender or Malwarebytes. Long-term pricing is high, with auto-renewal price hikes costing sometimes $30 to $50 more per year than competitors' plans.

Most of McAfee’s features are in line with those of its competitors, offering antivirus, privacy and identity protection tools. There aren’t many extras to justify the higher price, though McAfee’s online account cleanup tool -- which is more comprehensive and easier to use than similar tools I’ve tested -- could make it worthwhile for some.

McAfee: Is it right for you?

McAfee’s antivirus is effective, but its high resource usage during scans -- and the length of its full scans -- make it less appealing for most people than low-resource alternatives such as Bitdefender and Malwarebytes. Most of McAfee’s additional tools aren’t anything to write home about either, with performance similar to, or in some cases worse than, comparable tools from other antivirus companies. However, there are still some good things about McAfee:

• Great usability: McAfee’s account dashboard, antivirus software and other tools are easy to navigate, even for folks who aren’t technically inclined.
• Extensive identity monitoring tools: You can enter many different types of ID, including an unlimited number of usernames and email addresses, into McAfee’s systems to be monitored for dark web breaches.
• Useful Online Account Cleanup: McAfee quickly finds all accounts connected to your email address and gives you the tools to easily delete them. I consider this to be McAfee’s best, and most unique, feature.
• Good customer service: McAfee’s knowledge base is extensive and intuitive. If you can’t find answers in the knowledge base, you’ll be pleased to find that McAfee’s customer service agents are both fast and helpful.
• Unlimited device coverage: All McAfee Plus individual plans let you extend protection to unlimited devices, with no additional charges. This is notable when compared to other top antivirus companies, which all have strict device limits and sometimes charge extra fees if you want to cover more than three devices.

You can choose McAfee if these benefits hold significant appeal for you, but I personally still recommend using Bitdefender or Malwarebytes instead. You can also opt for Norton if you have between six and 10 devices and you want better performance than McAfee’s antivirus.