Malwarebytes for Mac Premium

Years of Mac commercials touted the concept that PCs get viruses, but Macs don’t. In the real world, Macs are an attractive target for malware coders. Perhaps not as inviting a target as PCs or Android devices, but there’s no question that Mac-specific malware exists. Going without Mac antivirus protection is just a bad idea. Malwarebytes has a reputation for wiping out malware even when other utilities fail, but the Mac edition doesn’t have lab test reports to back that up. One independent lab labels Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac a top product, while Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac holds near-perfect scores from two labs. If independent verification is important to you, one of these two Mac antivirus programs may suit you better.

How Much Does Malwarebytes for Mac Premium Cost?

Just under $40 per year is a common price for a single year’s antivirus subscription, both Windows and macOS editions. A third of the Mac antivirus utilities I follow hit this mark. Malwarebytes is just a little higher, at $44.99 per year, but at the three-license level, it aligns with the rest. Half of the macOS antivirus utilities that offer a three-license subscription charge between $55 and $60; Malwarebytes goes for $59.99 at the three-license level.

Paying $79.99 per year gets you five licenses. With multi-device subscriptions, subscription you can install Malwarebytes on Macs or Windows boxes, your choice. Note that at the three- and five-device tiers, an extra $20 per year gets you the Malwarebytes Privacy VPN.

With Norton, you pay $114.99 per year for five licenses. You get VPN protection with no bandwidth limits at this level, along with a full panoply of other security suite features. McAfee AntiVirus Plus for Mac charges $64.99 per year, but that license lets you install protection on all your macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS devices. As you can see, there's a lot of variation in pricing.

No money in the budget for Mac antivirus? No problem! You can install and run Avast, AVG, or Avira Free Antivirus for Mac on your personal Macs without paying a penny.

If you're stuck with an old Mac or legacy software that won't run on current versions of macOS, Malwarebytes may not be the best choice. Like ESET Cyber Security for Mac, G Data, and Total Defense, it requires Sierra (10.12) or later. Mac antiquarians will be pleased to know that ProtectWorks supports all versions of the operating system back to Snow Leopard (10.6), and Intego goes back to Mavericks (10.9).

Getting Started With Malwarebytes

On the Windows platform, Malwarebytes is the go-to solution when persistent, pernicious malware resists removal by antivirus. Tech support agents from other security companies have been known to enlist help from Malwarebytes when all else fails. I've been able to see it in action by infecting a test system and then challenging Malwarebytes to clean it up, using my hand-coded tools to verify its success. I’m not nearly as well-equipped to test the efficacy of macOS antivirus tools, but Malwarebytes does rate very highly in my phishing protection test.

As with Malwarebytes Free on Windows, you can download the Mac program and run a cleanup scan without paying anything. That can be handy if another antivirus utility detected a threat but failed to fully eliminate it. Paying for the premium edition gets you real-time protection, automatic updates, and blocking of adware and potentially unwanted programs, or PUPs.

Like ProtectWorks AntiVirus for Mac, this antivirus has a main window that's all about scanning for malware. Three large panels bear the labels Device History, Scanner, and Real-Time Protection. They look very similar to the Windows edition but with fewer options. There’s just one kind of scan, for example, a quick scan for active malware. Real-Time Protection just holds simple toggles to turn related features on and off.

A stylized landscape decorates the status banner above those three panels. You can click a shield icon at the top to see any recommendations, much like the Trusted Advisor feature in Windows editions. Clicking the gear icon for Settings lets you schedule a scan at varying intervals from one hour to one month.

By default, Malwarebytes scans your Mac on a daily schedule. ESET, Webroot AntiVirus for Mac, McAfee, and Trend Micro also include scheduling, with a regular scan scheduled by default.

Malware Protection Testing

The independent antivirus testing labs put Windows antivirus to the test in a wide variety of ways, many of them closely resembling real-world malware-attack situations. Two of the labs I follow also test and evaluate macOS antivirus programs. When I first began covering antivirus on the macOS platform, I only included apps with scores from at least one lab. At present, the majority of macOS antivirus purveyors, including Malwarebytes, don’t participate in macOS testing with either lab.

With so few purveyors of security participating in Mac antivirus testing, I can’t really fault any individual antivirus merely for a lack of test results. Even so, I’m impressed by those who not only appear in test reports from both labs but also attain a pair of perfect scores. These paragons of malware-fighting virtue are Avast, AVG, Kaspersky Standard for Mac, and Trend Micro. These two earned a perfect 18 points from AV-Test Institute and reached 100% protection in tests by AV-Comparatives.

Hands On With Malwarebytes

Most antivirus programs include the option to scan your entire Mac for malware. Many also offer a quick scan that just looks for active malware and malware traces in common locations. However, a full scan is counter to the Malwarebytes philosophy. The company's thinking goes like this: If you really have an infection, the quick scan will see that there's a problem and remediate it. All a full scan could find beyond that is static malware that's inert and not doing any immediate harm.

Indeed, a scan of the Mac that I use for testing finished in about 15 seconds. That's darned fast, considering that the average quick scan time for recent Mac antivirus programs is about 6 minutes.

Malwarebytes doesn’t promise to do anything about Windows-centric malware. That makes sense, given that a program written for Windows can’t even run on macOS. I copied my Windows malware samples to a sensitive area on the test Mac and verified that Malwarebytes didn't touch them. To see antivirus protection in action, I had to download a file that was clean enough to make it into the App Store but problematic enough to get flagged as a PUP by Malwarebytes. As you can see in the image below, Malwarebytes quarantined the app as a PUP.

Browser Guard for Web Protection

Whether free or Premium, on Windows or macOS, Malwarebytes provides web protection through the Browser Guard extension. You can easily install Browser Guard for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. A Safari edition is available separately from the Mac App Store. I used the Chrome edition for testing.

The Browser Guard extension blocks ads and trackers on the websites you visit. A numeric overlay on the toolbar icon shows the number of items blocked on the current site. You can click that icon for details, including a list of blocked items, and you can allow individual ads or trackers on a per-site basis. Note that the add-on for Safari lacks some of these features, including the numeric overlay and the ability to fine-tune blocked items.

Perhaps more importantly, Browser Guard diverts your browser away from dangerous websites such as those hosting malware. It also detects and suppresses phishing websites. These are fraudulent pages that masquerade as bank sites, email accounts, shopping pages, and other sensitive sites. It’s possible to spot these frauds, but everyone has a bad day. If you take the bate and log in, the phishing fraudsters capture your login credentials, meaning they now own your account.

Unlike malware coding, creating phishing sites is a platform-agnostic sort of attack. You can fall prey to a phishing scam on a Mac, a PC, an internet-enabled gaming console, or just about any device with a browser.

To test phishing protection, I start by visiting websites that track such things and gathering hundreds of recently reported URLs. I make a point of including both verified frauds and pages so new they haven’t been rated. I copy my list, between 300 and 400 items, to four test systems, one protected by the antivirus undergoing the phishing test and the other three using the protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. For Windows installations, I’ve coded up a handy program that launches each URL and lets me record a block, a miss, or an error. On the Mac, I do a lot of copy and paste to accomplish the same effect.

If any of the four browsers throws an error, that sample URL goes on the scrap heap. Also, if the page in question doesn’t clearly fit the profile for phishing, meaning it tries to steal your credentials, I discard it. Usually, I wind up with data for around 100 verified phishing URLs.

This test always uses the latest phishing frauds, so the samples are different every time I run it. I report both the detection rate of the antivirus under test and the difference between that score and what the three browsers attained. The most effective phishing defenders stand above all three browsers, naturally. At the other end of the scale, some score far below the built-in browser protection.

I tested Browser Guard in Chrome on both macOS and Windows, and the results came in precisely the same, with an impressive 99% detection rate, the same as AVG and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac. Among Mac antivirus utilities, only Avast and Trend Micro scored higher, each reaching a perfect 100.

Good for Both Mac and Windows

Malwarebytes for Mac Premium, with its sidekick Browser Guard, did well in our testing. The independent labs don’t vouch for it, but then, almost two-thirds of the Mac antivirus programs we follow don’t show up in lab tests. It’s an especially good choice if you’re already using Malwarebytes on your Windows boxes. However, the labs do shower praises on Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac, and these two antivirus utilities offer substantially more security features than Malwarebytes, earning them our Editors' Choice award.