Panda

Panda is still here — it changed owners, not existence. The Spanish company Panda Security was acquired in 2020 by WatchGuard, a US network-security firm, and its consumer products continue under the Panda Dome line (antivirus, VPN, family features), still maintained and updated. The free antivirus also still exists. If the brand feels quieter than it once was, that's the ownership shift: Panda now sits inside a larger business-security company. For home users the practical answer is simple: the products didn't go away, and licenses keep working and renewing normally.

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Yes — Panda Free Antivirus is a real free tier with basic real-time protection, and it doesn't expire. The limits appear quickly, though: the firewall, parental controls, cleanup tools and serious VPN capacity live in the paid Panda Dome plans, with the unlimited VPN reserved for the top Dome Premium tier. The paid plan we track, Panda Dome Advanced covering 5 devices, costs US$64.49/yr for the first year and renews at around US$86/yr. If free protection is the whole point, compare Avira first — its free tier is the most complete in our lineup.

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Decent rather than top-tier. Panda's everyday protection is solid and its interface is one of the friendliest in the category, but in recent independent lab rounds it posted the weakest real-world protection score in our lineup and more false alarms than the leaders — the gap to Bitdefender or Norton is measurable, not imagined. Its genuine strengths are simplicity and household breadth: approachable apps, family plans and unlimited-device options that cover many machines affordably. If maximum protection is the goal, Bitdefender is the stronger buy; if you want simple, adequate coverage across a busy household, Panda still earns a place.

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For most people, Panda Dome Complete is the balanced choice: it adds the firewall, system cleanup and parental controls to the core protection. Panda Dome Premium is the maxed-out tier, adding the unlimited VPN and priority tech support. One rung down, Dome Advanced — the 5-device plan we track, at US$64.49/yr for the first year — covers the essentials most households use. Whichever tier tempts you, compare renewal prices rather than intro offers: the first year is promotional across the range, and the second-year rate is what you'll actually live with.

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Two different clocks. Panda Free Antivirus never expires — you can run it indefinitely at no cost. Paid Dome licenses run for the term you buy, typically one year, and renew automatically unless you switch auto-renew off. Renewal is the moment to pay attention: the first-year price is promotional and the renewal rate is higher, so check what year two will cost in your account before the anniversary. Protection doesn't fade mid-term — while the license is active, updates and definitions keep flowing.

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Run a full system scan — not the quick scan — from the Panda dashboard and let it finish; detected threats are moved to quarantine automatically. Then open the quarantine, review what was caught, and delete the confirmed infections; quarantined files are already neutralized, so nothing is urgent. If a threat returns after a restart, escalate to the boot-time scan or Panda's dedicated cleanup tools, which run before Windows fully loads and can catch malware that hides from a normal scan. Update definitions first, and rescan until the results come back clean.

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