Macs may not be 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, though the Mac edition doesn’t have lab test reports to back that up. Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac holds a perfect score from one independent lab, while Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac earns excellent scores from two labs. If independent verification is important to you, one of these two Editors’ Choice winners may suit you better.

How Much Does Malwarebytes Premium Security for Mac Cost?

Just under $40 per year is a common price for a single year’s antivirus subscription, both Windows and macOS editions. More than a third of the Mac antivirus utilities I follow hit this range. Malwarebytes is just a little higher for a single device, $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; a three-pack of Malwarebytes goes for $59.99.

Multi-device pricing for Malwarebytes is more flexible than most. You can order from two to 20 licenses, at a price of $29.99 plus $10 per license. Thus paying $79.99 per year gets you five licenses, and a 20-license pack is $229.99. With multi-device subscriptions, subscription you can install Malwarebytes on Macs or Windows boxes, your choice. If you’re protecting up to five devices, an extra $20 per year gets you the Malwarebytes Privacy VPN. From six to 20 devices, the with-VPN price is $34.99 plus $13 per license, topping out at $294.99 for 20 licenses.

With Norton, you pay $119.99 per year for five cross-platform licenses. You get VPN protection with no bandwidth limits at this level, along with a full panoply of other security suite features. McAfee Total Protection for Mac also costs $119.99 per year for five licenses. It doesn’t offer the unlimited licenses you used to get with McAfee AntiVirus Plus, alas. You do still get the option to install protection on macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, or 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, F-Secure, and Trend Micro, it requires Big Sur (11) or later. Mac antiquarians will be pleased to know that ProtectWorks AntiVirus for Mac 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 a popular solution when persistent, pernicious malware resists removal by your standard antivirus tool. Tech support agents from other security companies have been known to enlist help from Malwarebytes when their own app 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.

This antivirus has had a makeover since my last review. Its main window now almost precisely duplicates that of Malwarebytes Premium Security on Windows. A simple left-side menu just lets you choose between settings and the main dashboard. Along the right-hand side, a large panel provides advice from the Trusted Advisor component. If your protection score isn’t at 100%, Trusted Advisor lets you know how to improve it.

A stack of three panels in the middle let you access Scanner, Real-Time Protection, and Detection History. A larger panel below those three represents the VPN. Unless you’ve paid extra for the VPN component, this feature won’t be available.

Clicking General on the Settings page lets you tweak antivirus behavior, throttle the app’s CPU usage, and control its scheduled scans. By default, it runs a daily scan, but you can modify that scan job or create additional jobs at intervals from an hour to a month. ESET, Webroot AntiVirus for Mac, McAfee, and Trend Micro also include scheduling, with a regular scan scheduled by default.

Malware Protection Lab 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 that 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 four 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 10 seconds. That's darned fast, considering that the average quick scan time for recent Mac antivirus programs is about five minutes. Full scan times for macOS antivirus apps average 24 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.

My company contact confirmed that this is the expected behavior, saying, “The way our engine works is that threats have to be in their installed state for us to be able to detect them.  Our signatures are written with the location of that specific malware for detections to occur.”

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 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 phishing frauds if you’re vigilant, but everyone has a bad day. If you take the bait 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 attack. You can fall prey to a phishing scam on a Mac, a PC, an internet-enabled riding mower, 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, using the same samples and expecting the results to come in precisely the same. When the dust settled, I found that the Mac edition scored noticeably higher. My Malwarebytes contacts explained that Browser Guard gets updates every 20-30 minutes. Since I tested the Mac edition a couple of hours later than Windows, its better score isn’t surprising.

With 99% phishing detection, Malwarebytes ties with Avast and AVG. Among Mac antivirus utilities, only McAfee and Trend Micro scored higher, each reaching a perfect 100%.

Verdict: Good for Both Mac and Windows

Malwarebytes Premium Security for Mac, 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 those lab tests. Malwarebytes is an especially good choice if you’re already using its Windows edition. However, the labs do praise 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.