Malwarebytes

Trusted. Malwarebytes is an American company — founded in 2008 by Marcin Kleczynski and headquartered in Santa Clara, California — whose tools are widely recommended for finding and removing malware that other products miss. Security professionals and repair techs routinely reach for its free scanner as a second opinion, which is about as practical an endorsement as the industry gives. It's a specialist with an excellent reputation in its niche: cleanup first, traditional suite features second.

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Yes — removal is its specialty and the reason it exists. Malwarebytes is particularly effective against adware, browser hijackers, spyware and potentially unwanted programs that slip past traditional antivirus, which is why it's our malware-removal pick. The free version scans and removes on demand — ideal for cleaning an already-infected machine at no cost. What free doesn't do is real-time blocking: stopping infections before they land requires the paid version. So for rescue jobs, free Malwarebytes is excellent; for prevention, you need Premium or a conventional suite alongside it.

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The plan we price for Canada is Malwarebytes Premium Security covering 5 devices at US$59.99/yr per year, renewing at US$99.99/yr. Configurations with fewer devices cost less, and a higher tier adds a VPN. The free version remains genuinely free for on-demand scanning and cleanup — no subscription required — which is the right starting point if you just need to disinfect one machine. Paid purchases are backed by a 60-day money-back guarantee, longer than most rivals in this comparison offer.

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It's narrower than a full suite: no firewall, no parental controls, no backup — you're buying a specialist engine, not an all-rounder. The free version has no real-time shield, so it only cleans up after the fact. And in the independent lab rounds it does enter, it has logged consistently more false positives than the traditional leaders — flagging legitimate files more often than Bitdefender or ESET do. For deep cleanup it remains superb; as your only line of defence, a conventional suite (or pairing Malwarebytes with Microsoft Defender) covers more ground.

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No. Malwarebytes is American — founded in 2008 by Marcin Kleczynski and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with no Russian ownership or operations. Its name occasionally gets tangled in searches with vendors under geopolitical scrutiny, but Malwarebytes isn't one of them.

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It depends which Malwarebytes. With the paid Premium version: not necessarily — it's designed to serve as primary real-time protection and registers itself with Windows as your security product. With the free version: yes, you still need one, because free Malwarebytes has no real-time shield and only cleans up after infection. A popular budget setup pairs the two specialists: Microsoft Defender (built into Windows) handles real-time blocking, while the free Malwarebytes scanner runs occasional deep-cleanup passes — two layers at no cost. What you shouldn't do is rely on the free scanner alone; by the time it runs, the malware is already in.

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