McAfee

Yes — McAfee LiveSafe and the current McAfee+ plans include McAfee's Secure VPN. The condition worth knowing: on most subscriptions, the VPN's unlimited data requires auto-renewal to stay enabled — switch auto-renewal off and you lose that benefit. It's one of McAfee's less-loved terms, because it pits the cautious billing choice against the useful feature. If an unlimited VPN without strings matters to you, Norton 360 includes one with no such condition.

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McAfee Total Protection covering five devices starts at US$39.99/yr for the first year — one of the lower entry prices among the full suites here, with frequent promotions on top. Give equal attention to the renewal: it returns to US$119.99/yr, a multiple of the intro offer, so diarise the date or disable auto-renewal and decide afresh each year (remembering the VPN benefit tied to keeping it on). A 30-day money-back guarantee covers a change of heart, and the unlimited-device family plans sit above this entry tier if you're covering a whole household.

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Real McAfee alerts come from the installed app — never from a browser pop-up. If a 'McAfee' warning appears while you're browsing, urging urgent renewal or claiming infections — especially on a machine that doesn't even have McAfee installed — it's scareware or phishing. The safe routine: close the tab without clicking anything, then open the McAfee app directly or log in at mcafee.com and check your genuine subscription status there. Never click renewal links in pop-ups or unexpected emails; that's precisely the channel the scammers rely on.

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Norton edges it on independent lab scores and suite depth — cloud backup, password manager, dark web monitoring; McAfee counters with unlimited-device plans and strong identity-protection features that suit big households wanting one subscription for everything. Both are legitimate veterans, and both renew far above their intro prices, so the auto-renewal decision matters either way. For one to a few devices, Norton — or better still Bitdefender, which out-protects both; for covering everything a gadget-heavy family owns, McAfee's unlimited-device value is hard to beat.

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Log in at mcafee.com, open My Account and then Subscriptions — you'll see your plan, covered devices, expiry date and the auto-renewal toggle. The same details live in the McAfee app under Account. Do the check now rather than when a renewal email lands: with McAfee's renewal sitting well above the intro price — and unlimited VPN data tied to auto-renewal staying on — that toggle is the most consequential setting in the account, so decide deliberately.

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Bitdefender for pure protection and performance: better independent lab scores, lighter on the system, and our overall number one in this ranking. McAfee's answer is breadth per household — unlimited-device plans plus identity monitoring in one subscription. Quality-first buyers with a handful of devices should take Bitdefender; quantity-first households with laptops, phones and tablets everywhere are McAfee's home turf. Whichever you choose, check the renewal price — both climb steeply after the first year.

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