Norton 360 antivirus review

Since its founding in 1982, Norton has grown into one of the most trusted names in cybersecurity. For decades, it has helped millions of users protect their devices from online threats. But how does it hold up in 2026? To find out, the Cybernews research team and I spent a few weeks testing Norton 360, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, and comparing it to other options on the market.

Our review showed that Norton 360 is one of the top performers across all our in-house antivirus tests as well as independent lab testing. Below, we explore whether it still stands as a reliable choice for protecting your PC and whether it’s the right option for you.

⭐ Rating:	4.8 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
🥇 Overall rank:	#2 out of #30
💵 Price:	From $29.99/year
✂️ Free version:	❌ No
🖥️ Platforms:	Windows, macOS, iOS, Android
🔥 Coupons:	Norton coupon 60% OFF

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Norton 360 pros and cons

Getting started with Norton: choosing the right plan

For this review, we took advantage of the free trial. We chose it because it grants access to all of its core features and even add-ons, so we were able to test Norton 360 thoroughly and without limitations.

That said, Norton AntiVirus Plus is a good starting point and offers robust protection from $29.99/year. Still, there are more budget-friendly options available. For example, you can get Bitdefender Antivirus Plus for just $12.99/year, although you’ll get less features, and TotalAV Antivirus Pro has a similar suite but costs significantly less, only $19.00/year. However, Norton 360 Deluxe is cheaper than Bitdefender Premium Security, a similar solution that starts at $64.99/year.

Here’s a quick breakdown of Norton 360’s plans and pricing.

	AntiVirus Plus	Standard	Deluxe	Select Plus
Price	$29.99/year	$39.99/year	$49.99/year	$99.99/year
Price after the first year	$59.99/year	$94.99/year	$119.99/year	$189.99/year
Device coverage	1	3	5	10
Cloud backup	2GB	2GB	50GB	250GB
Standout features	Genie scam protection, 100% virus protection promise, password manager	VPN, dark web monitoring (availability varies based on country)	VPN, dark web monitoring (availability varies based on country), Parental Control	Privacy monitor, LifeLock identity theft protection, social security and credit alerts, up to $25,000 in stolen funds reimbursement
Best for	Individuals who need essential protection	Individuals who want to protect more devices and want enhanced privacy	Families	Individuals or families who need comprehensive multiple-device security, big cloud backup storage, and identity protection

View Norton antivirus plans

Generally speaking, Norton offers a good selection of plans at very reasonable price points, especially compared to other top antiviruses on the market, such as McAfee or Avira. Upgrading from the starter plan grants access to add-ons like the VPN and password manager, and expands the number of people that can use the service, but not much else. If you’re really looking for a comprehensive cybersecurity package, your best bet is either the Deluxe or Select Plus plans. Both significantly expand the number of people that can use the service and grant up to 250GB of cloud storage. Deluxe adds parental controls while Select Plus enhances your online privacy with features like Privacy Monitor, identity theft protection, and more, although it’s significantly more expensive.

Does Norton Antivirus have a free plan?

No, Norton Antivirus doesn’t have a free plan, but you can try it out with a 30-day free trial. Plus, you can use Norton’s generous 90-day money-back guarantee as a trial as well – as long as you cancel within that time, you will get your money back.

Norton antivirus security features

Norton 360 offers one of the strongest security suites available, combining powerful antivirus protection with a wide range of helpful extras. Its core antivirus software includes all the essential features you’d expect from a premium antivirus solution, including real-time protection malware detection and removal, on-demand scanner, and firewall. On top of that, you get access to add-ons like VPN, password manager, and cloud backup to improve your online experience and enhance privacy.

Real-time threat protection against malware, ransomware, and phishing

Norton uses a combination of AI and machine learning to protect you against common online threats like viruses, malware, spyware, ransomware, and even phishing attempts. It’s a continuous, always-on feature that runs in the background as you work on your device.

Norton takes extra steps to stop phishing attacks with the Safe Web browser extension, which I particularly appreciate, especially since phishing is on the rise. It warns you about risky links across search engines, email, and even social media.

What’s more, Norton has introduced a built-in Scam Detection feature powered by advanced AI – Norton Genie. It analyzes texts, emails, and links in real time to identify potential scams and phishing attempts, helping users quickly spot and avoid online fraud.

Smart Firewall

A firewall is a core feature of any antivirus, but Norton takes a slightly different approach to firewalls. It has built a two-way silent firewall that works by monitoring the network traffic that’s both sent and received on your computer.

Simply put, it goes beyond basic protection by monitoring both incoming and outgoing traffic, preventing intrusions and highlighting vulnerabilities across your system.

Secure VPN

Norton users get access to Norton VPN, which hides your IP address and encrypts your internet traffic, granting you an additional layer of privacy. A VPN has many uses, but I found it most beneficial when on unsecured networks like Public Wi-Fi, which Norton VPN is perfect for.

It has servers in over 65 countries, so it’s also a decent option for bypassing geo-restrictions and unblocking international content like Japanese Netflix or US-only shows on Peacock. While it’s not the best VPN on the market, Norton VPN is a solid option for those just starting out with VPNs, and is well worth a try if it’s included with your selected Norton plan.

Password manager

Password managers are becoming more and more of a necessity, so it’s nice that Norton includes it in some of its plans. Simply put, a password manager is a handy tool that stores all of your passwords in a secure vault, allowing you to login without having to fill in your login details. It makes it easy to secure your accounts with strong passwords and provides insights on your password health – crucial for anyone with tens of online accounts.

Cloud backup

Norton also includes secure cloud backup to safeguard your important files from data loss or ransomware attacks. Although I only find it valuable with Deluxe and Select Plus plans as they include way more storage than the AntiVirus Plus and Standard plans (50GB and 250GB over 2GB). Overall, it’s a convenient and secure remote cloud storage that will save space on your personal device. If you’re looking for an all-round tool with cloud storage, then it’s perfect, but it’s not worth it on the starter plans.

Altogether, I find it’s an all-round cybersecurity package designed to keep your devices safe and running smoothly.

Installation and setup

I found the Norton antivirus setup process straightforward, with apps designed with usability in mind. Norton 360 offers one of the most comprehensive security suites I’ve tested, compatible with all major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. However, I find it strange that it doesn’t support Linux.

I found signing up and paying for Norton 360 was easy – I could choose from paying by credit/debit card, PayPal, or Google Pay, and it took seconds. Now, let’s see how easy it is to install and use.

Norton 360 installation

For me, Norton 360 was pretty easy to download and install on the desktop, although I did find it a little annoying. Unlike other antivirus products, which allow you to download the installer straight from their website, Norton requires you to log in through the browser first.

I installed Norton 360 on a Windows Server 2022 Intel Xeon 8259CL, 32GB RAM. First, I logged into My Norton account and assigned a license to my computer. Then, I selected Download in the Install My Apps dashboard.

From there, the process was pretty simple as Norton walks you through it step by step. Norton prompted my computer to open the correct window and gave me instructions on granting it the relevant permissions. Within a few minutes, it was up and running. Be mindful that it does insist on restarting your device as part of the installation process.

As the last step, Norton will give you a guided tour of the software so you know where everything is. If you ever forget anything, you can refer back to this information by clicking on the Settings button on the home page.

I found Norton’s user interface slightly confusing. The layout is not very intuitive, so navigating through the settings and customizing features seems unnecessarily challenging. While overall functionality is faultless, Norton could improve by making its app design a bit less busy, more streamlined, and user-friendly.

Another thing to remember is that many of Norton’s features open outside the app. So, whether you want to launch the Software Updater, access your Dark Web Monitoring, or add parental controls, you’ll be redirected to a webpage with more information. A new tab for each function isn’t quite ideal, and I feel Norton should create a more unified interface to enhance the user experience. Overall, while Norton’s security is undoubtedly great, a more minimalistic and functional app design could elevate the general experience.

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Norton 360 mobile apps

The Norton Mobile Security app brings Norton’s best security features to your phone. The app is really easy to set up and use, and the design is similar on both Android and iOS devices. Simply go to the app store, download the Norton 360 app, and sign in. I found it way more simple than the desktop app setup.

It’s got a beautifully simple interface with all the main features available on the homepage. It starts quick scans straight away, so you don’t even need to tell it to start monitoring your privacy and checking for potential threats.

My main issue is that there are a lot of features on Norton Mobile Security you can only use if you download separate apps (Password Manager, Norton VPN, and Parental Control). I believe it would be much more convenient for many if everything was included in one app.

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Norton on Android

Like with most antivirus services, the Norton Android app is more feature-rich than the iOS one. For starters, whenever you open a link, Norton’s Link Guard feature checks if the site is secure to keep your phone safe from phishing scams and malicious sites.

The Norton Mobile Security Android app comes with the following features:

• Web Protection to block fraudulent sites that could potentially steal sensitive data.
• Wi-Fi Security, which scans your Wi-Fi connection for possible threats.
• System Advisor that will alert you about operating system threats.
• Safe Search, which will help you avoid phishing scams and risky sites while browsing the internet.
• Privacy Report, which tells you what data your apps share.
• Anti Malware scanning and real-time malware protection.
• App Advisor, which checks apps for privacy and potential battery issues.

Norton on iOS

Norton’s Android app has a few more features than the iOS Norton app for iPhone. Given Apple’s built-in restrictions, that’s to be expected. The interface, however, is very similar, if not identical, to Android.

The iOS app comes with web protection, a secure calendar, identity monitoring, and Wi-Fi, Device, and SMS security. You can also get a password manager, VPN, or cloud backup as separate apps.

Our tests with Norton 360 Antivirus

Together with the Cybernews research team, I measured Norton 360’s performance through in-house and independent antivirus lab tests, its impact on device performance, and its ability to detect and stop malware, ransomware, and phishing attempts. Additionally, throughout the entire testing process, we kept an eye on the CPU and RAM usage to measure the antivirus’ impact on our computer’s performance.

For the testing, we used a Windows Server 2022 Intel Xeon 8259CL, 32GB RAM device.

Below I share our findings to provide a comprehensive understanding of how Norton balances security, speed, and system resource usage.

Real-world protection and malware detection

Even though independent lab results are a good indicator of whether an antivirus is effective, we still ran our own in-house tests to evaluate Norton 360’s anti-malware capabilities. Together with the research team, we performed malware detection tests against prevalent viruses and ransomware and evaluated Norton’s ability to safeguard against phishing attacks.

Before we dive in, I want to give you a quick overview of the types of scans you can do with Norton 360.

Smart scan scans your device, checks whether there are any privacy issues with the Wi-Fi network, and tunes up the system.

During our testing, the smart scan was very quick – it took around 30 seconds to scan around 10,000 files. While the scan found some junk files and registry issues, it didn’t manage to detect any of the 10 specifically planted malware files. Surprisingly, the CPU load was around 67%.

Quick scan scans for malware where it is usually found (in temporary files, system files, as well as running processes). It took around 40 seconds and scanned around 10,000 files. Unfortunately, the Quick scan didn’t find any of the 10 malicious files planted specifically for research purposes. The CPU load ranged from 25% to 39%.

Full system scan scans your entire device. It took a lot longer than the smart and quick scans – more than 11 minutes. It was also much more successful than the other scans. Among 300,000 scanned files, it found all 10 malicious files. The CPU load was around 41% – a very impressive result for a full scan. We used all of the different scans to test Norton 360 further.

First and foremost, we put Norton 360 to the test to see how well it fares against various types of malware. This is what we did:

• Implanted 150 different malware samples
• Ran a full scan
• Observed the Norton app’s CPU and RAM usage

A full scan took about 10 minutes, during which Norton scanned over 400,000 files. I’m used to full scans taking about an hour to complete, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was so quick.

The full scan results were also satisfying. Norton detected and resolved 133 malware samples from the 150 implanted into the test computer. I like that Norton gives you an overview of each malware type, their status, and information on which files were infected.

Second on the list was Norton’s anti-ransomware protection. The research team implanted 10 types of ransomware onto the test computer. This time, however, we launched Smart, Quick, and Full scans to see whether they can detect the ransomware.

The results for the Quick and Smart scans were disappointing. Neither the Quick nor the Smart scan was able to detect any of the ransomware samples. Both of these scans took less than a few minutes, which may explain why it didn’t detect any ransomware.

The full scan, on the other hand, detected and removed all 10 ransomware samples in under 10 minutes – pretty impressive. These results show that you shouldn’t trust the Smart and Quick scans to detect any malware.

Lastly, we dived into phishing attacks, which are on the rise, so it’s crucial to get an antivirus with strong anti-phishing capabilities. Norton provides an anti-phishing browser extension called Safe Web. It’s a simple add-on that blocks you from visiting malicious websites. You can choose to ignore its warnings and visit the websites anyway, but I don’t recommend it.

During our testing, we tried to visit 10 suspicious and malicious websites, and the results were pretty decent. Safe Web blocked 9 out of 10 of malicious websites.

EICAR test results

Our team also did an EICAR test. EICAR is a test file that simulates malware. It’s a quick and easy way to see if your antivirus is configured correctly and can detect and remove viruses as the file isn’t actual malware.

We started by heading to the official EICAR website to download the file but were stopped by Safe Web, Norton’s anti-phishing browser extension. It warned us about going to the website and clearly stated the name of the malicious file – quite impressive. This shows that Norton’s real‑time threat detection capabilities effectively block threats at the earliest point in the attack chain and reduce the risk of malware entering the operating system in the first place.

For testing purposes, we ignored the warning and downloaded the EICAR file in a ZIP format on our computer while Norton was temporarily disabled. Then, we re-enabled Norton 360 and extracted the ZIP file. During extraction, Norton detected the EICAR test files and blocked access to them. The files were automatically moved to quarantine, and the event was recorded in Norton’s security history. This shows that Norton scans files during access and can detect known threats in compressed archives before they are opened or run.

Independent third-party lab test results

Not only is Norton antivirus safe, but it also has a long history of perfect (or near-perfect) virus detection test results. Even during the most recent independent AV-TEST testing (December 2025), it scored a maximum of 6 points in protection, performance, and usability. In fact, Norton consistently scored 6/6 points throughout the entire 2025 year testing period, with only 1 false positive – quite impressive.

In other words, Norton virus protection features caught 100% of zero-day malware and had less impact on computer speed than many other antivirus programs. This makes its malware protection virtually untouchable.

The latest AV-Comparatives malware protection test (September 2025) also showed great results – Norton scored a near-perfect 99.98% protection rate and demonstrated only 8 false alarms. It’s a slight improvement from its previous test (March 2025), where Norton scored 99.96% and had 10 false positives. It received the Advanced+ award and is among AV-Comparatives’ top antivirus solutions.

Other independent experts also revealed that Norton 360 doesn’t stop functioning even after deleting some of its files, closing down the app’s processes, and unloading drivers.

A test with custom-made ransomware was also a success for Norton: the antivirus program detected the attack in seconds.

Because each lab uses a different scoring system, I standardized their ratings to a uniform scale out of 100. This allowed me to easily compare the results and evaluate how each antivirus performed. Here are my findings:

• Analysis performed on February 5th, 2026.

PC performance impact

Antivirus scans and general background activity put a lot of pressure on your computer’s CPU. Some antivirus programs are heavier than others. For example, Avira used up to 92% of the CPU during the same test, which significantly slowed down the overall PC performance. Luckily, that’s not an issue with Norton 360. That said, it all depends on your device and the scan you perform.

During our previous test, I found that Norton’s full scans take up between 18-42% of the CPU, with 42% being the maximum detected. Our most recent tests have shown slightly different results, with the full scan taking up to 41% of the CPU, which indicates that Norton’s performance stays consistent.

Compared to other antiviruses, like Avira, this number is remarkably low. When comparing Norton 360’s impact on PC performance with Bitdefender’s, Norton still takes up less CPU. So, it’s truly one of the best options performance-wise, especially if you have an older device.

Customer support

Norton offers a range of customer support options, which include live chat, a 24/7 helpline, a community blog, and an extensive knowledge base.

Type of support	My experience
24/7 live chat	It was hard to find and required signing in. I was first connected to a bot, which wasn’t helpful and connected me to a real agent only after some time. The communication was friendly but rather slow.
24-hour phone support	Getting the phone number was difficult, which included some form-filling and signing in. First, I was connected to a bot, which needed convincing before I was connected to a live agent. The agent could have been more knowledgeable, but eventually provided an answer.

When you first visit the Customer Support page, you’re redirected to Norton’s knowledge base, where you can find a large variety of very detailed articles on the most frequent issues. There’s also a search bar to help you navigate through help guides and the FAQ. However, if you wish to talk to someone, you can opt for Norton’s live chat or a 24/7 helpline.

When I tried contacting customer support via live chat, I was a little annoyed with the whole process. First, finding the contact support button was difficult. Once I found it, I had to sign in, and only then could I start the live chat. I was greeted by a chatbot that tried to resolve my issue on its own. I had to convince it to redirect me to a live agent, and the whole process took way longer than it should have.

Although the live chat agent was friendly and tried to be helpful, they did take their time answering my questions. Moreover, I noticed that their answers weren’t always correct, which was quite annoying.

Overall, Norton has quite a few customer support channels. Whether you need human assistance or want to figure it out yourself, you’ll find enough options.

Norton 360 video review

Take a look at our comprehensive video review of Norton antivirus and all of its ins and outs:

User reviews

Norton 360 has generally good reviews on various user review platforms. Here’s an overview of what the consumers think.

	Trustpilot	Capterra	G2
Norton	4.7	4.4	4.2

The majority of users are satisfied with Norton’s products, particularly with its antivirus software and malware detection capabilities.

A decent number of Norton users have experienced difficulties with customer support, which I agree with. However, while I had a relatively good experience with the live support agent, many users were connected to agents who had no idea how to solve their queries.

Another common complaint is Norton’s pop-ups that try to sell users upgrades or entirely new products. It seems that it’s impossible to turn them off completely; therefore, some users are leaving Norton for good. On top of that, the process of cancelling subscription is tedious as it’s hidden deep within the settings, making users feel frustrated and annoyed.

Despite all the negatives, such as inconsistent support and constant upselling, Norton 360 seems to offer valuable protection against malware and online threats to most of its users.

Is Norton antivirus worth it?

Our testing has shown that Norton 360 is worth it for anyone who wants a robust antivirus with excellent anti-malware protection and minimal impact on performance. While it’s not the cheapest solution on the market, it’s a good middle-ground antivirus that offers an all-round package with practical add-ons like a VPN, password manager, and cloud storage.

That being said, if you just want basic protection, you can find better options at a much lower price. Norton 360 also has high renewal prices and is not ideal for those on a tight budget. Still, it’s a strong antivirus and is more than worth it, especially if you’re looking for a full package.

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