Best Antivirus and Endpoint Security for UK Business in 2026: Bitdefender Wins, ESET Has the Cleanest Lab Sheet, and Two Vendors Are Marked Down for Their Russian Links

Antivirus is the word people search for, but what a business buys in 2026 is an endpoint suite: malware and ransomware protection on every laptop, desktop and server, managed from one cloud console by whoever looks after IT, with detection and response (EDR) either included or a tier up and a managed service (MDR) for firms that would rather someone else watched the alerts. So we asked five questions of the thirteen products here. What does it cost per device per year on the business tier, and what does that price include? Does it stop things, according to the independent labs rather than the vendor? Can a small firm buy it and deploy it without a reseller? Who owns it and where is it engineered? And what does it cover: servers, Macs, phones, email?

The answers spread the field wide. The cheapest business tier with a real console and Windows Server cover is Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security at £24.60 a device a year at list (£17.22 on the current offer, servers included), then Avast Essential at £26.90 on renewal, Microsoft Defender for Business at £27.60 a user, Kaspersky at £31, ESET Protect Entry at £33.72, WithSecure at about £47.77 through a reseller, ThreatDown Core at £57.04, Acronis Standard at £59 and CrowdStrike Falcon Go at $59.99. Sophos, Trend Micro and Heimdal publish no UK price at all, and SentinelOne publishes $179.99 and sells only through partners. Only CrowdStrike will bill you month to month. EDR is in the entry price at Microsoft, Kaspersky, SentinelOne and WithSecure; a step up at Bitdefender (£54.40), ThreatDown (£65.31) and Acronis (£95); two steps up at CrowdStrike ($184.99); unpriced at ESET, Sophos, Trend Micro and Heimdal; and absent at Avast.

Then the question this category cannot avoid. Saaskly marks down security software with Russian ownership, management or engineering links, and says so on the profile rather than quietly leaving the vendor out. Kaspersky is last: Moscow-founded and Moscow-run, banned from sale in the United States since July 2024, warned against by the NCSC and Germany's BSI, and still the cheapest EDR on the page with lab results as good as anyone's. Acronis is second from last for its Russian founders and engineering history to March 2022, despite a competent product now majority-owned by EQT from Switzerland and Singapore. Bitdefender, the winner, is Romanian with every engineer in Romania, and it is the product Saaskly's own company runs.

Bitdefender is first-party; for security reasons we do not say which tier or how many devices we run. The other twelve are assessed on published pricing, the labs' own reports, vendor documentation and Trustpilot, and are labelled "Not yet tested". Prices were read on 9 September 2026 in a UK browser, per device per year on a one-year term at about 25 devices, in pounds excluding VAT unless a profile says otherwise; CrowdStrike and SentinelOne quote UK buyers in US dollars.

The winner

Bitdefender GravityZone: one price for everything you own, bought without a salesperson

GravityZone wins on the questions that matter to a small firm buying its own security. Business Security covers desktops, laptops and servers, physical or virtual, Windows, macOS and Linux, from one device count at £24.60 a device a year at list (£614.99 for 25 devices, or £430.49 on the 30 per cent first-term offer running when we looked). You buy it with a card on bitdefender.com for anything up to 100 devices, then add seats and renew from the licence page inside the console, and the same GravityZone Control Center runs from five seats to thousands, which is what Tim meant in the brief by a commercial structure that fits a small company and a large one. Ransomware Mitigation restores encrypted files from its own copies on every tier, Network Attack Defense and Risk Management are standard, and the labs agree: 99.8 per cent real-world protection with two false alarms and 99.9 per cent malware protection with none in AV-Comparatives' August to November 2025 business test, and three consecutive years of MITRE evaluations. The company is Romanian, founder-controlled with a minority investor, with all five engineering centres in Romania, and it wears the "Cybersecurity made in Europe" label.

The honest caveats. EDR is Business Security Premium at £54.40 a device (£38.08 on offer), more than double the scored tier; MDR has no published price at all; patching, disk encryption, email security and mobile protection are add-ons; and a direct buyer pays annually, with monthly billing reserved for MSP partners. Trustpilot's 4.3 is the consumer profile. None of that changes the verdict.

In our experience: Next Generation ICT Ltd, the company behind Saaskly, runs GravityZone on its own estate. We chose it for the commercial structure, the self-service licensing portal and how quickly it deploys, and because we found no Russian or Chinese link in its ownership or engineering. For security reasons we do not publish which tier or how many devices we run. Saaskly has an affiliate link for Bitdefender through impact.com, disclosed on the profile; it was joined after the score was set and did not change it.

The runner-up

ESET Protect: the cleanest lab sheet, the same buying route

ESET blocked all 461 real-world cases and scored 100 per cent in the malware test in the same AV-Comparatives round, rated "Very Fast", and it has five years of MITRE participation behind it. Protect Entry is £33.72 a device a year with Windows, macOS, Linux and file servers in one count, bought online to 100 devices and managed in ESET Protect Hub, and standard support is free. It is Slovak and privately held, with no Russian or Chinese link found.

Why Bitdefender edges it

Rollback and EDR. ESET's entry plan has no ransomware remediation; you need Advanced (£43.92 list) for that, and Advanced was cheaper than Entry in year one only because of a 30 per cent offer Entry did not carry. EDR is worse: not available on Entry, an unpriced add-on on Advanced and Complete, and included only on the quote-only Elite tier, so there is no self-service route to EDR at a published price, where Bitdefender at least prints one. ESET's RMM integrations, API and incident history could not be confirmed in our pass, and no MCP server was found.

The Microsoft 365 default

Microsoft Defender for Business (4.0) is the answer for most firms already on Microsoft 365, and the cheapest way here to get EDR at the entry price: £2.30 a user a month on an annual plan, £27.60 a year, for up to five devices per user, with the console data held in a UK region if you choose it at setup and deployment through Intune. Microsoft 365 Business Premium at £16.90 (or £20.28 month to month) bundles it with Defender for Office 365 for the mailbox, Intune for BitLocker and the Office apps. It scored 17 of 18 at AV-TEST and is Approved at AV-Comparatives. The marks against it are structural: Windows and Linux servers need a separate per-instance add-on capped at 60, there is no MDR at this tier because Defender Experts requires Defender for Endpoint Plan 2, it stops at 300 users, and Microsoft sat out the 2025 MITRE round. Microsoft's Beijing research lab and its wound-down Russian office are on the profile as an adjacent, historical note; they do not affect the score.

Full comparison

The one you can pay monthly

CrowdStrike Falcon Go (3.7) is the enterprise leader's small-business tier and the only product on this page with a genuine month-to-month price: $7.99 a device a month, or $59.99 a year, bought in CrowdStrike's own store with a 15-day trial and 30-day money back. The engine has the best lab record here (AV-Comparatives 98.6 per cent rising to 99.7 per cent, SE Labs AAA, AV-TEST's Best macOS Security 2025, MITRE 100 per cent) and CrowdStrike publishes an official MCP server. Read the comparison table before you buy, as we did live: EDR is crossed out on Falcon Go and on Falcon Pro ($99.99) and only ticked on Falcon Enterprise at $184.99, three times the scored price. Go stops at 100 devices, UK buyers pay in dollars, server coverage under Go is not stated, and 19 July 2024, when a content update took down 8.5 million Windows machines, is on the record with the Delta litigation still running. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

The budget console

Avast Business (3.6) replaces Norton Small Business here because Norton's own page says its product is for firms that "don't require a business dashboard", has no Windows Server support and stops at 20 devices; Avast Business Hub is the console Gen Digital, which owns both, actually sells to small firms. Essential Business Security is £26.90 a device a year on renewal, £21.52 in year one, ex VAT at 25 devices, with a 30-day trial that asks for no card and a stated 25 per cent renewal premium. Ultimate scored 99.0 per cent at AV-Comparatives and 6/6/6 at AV-TEST in 2026. What Avast does not have is any detection-and-response layer: no EDR, no XDR, no MDR at any price, patching only on Ultimate and only for Windows, and no Web Control on Essential. Gen Digital's record includes Avast's Jumpshot browsing-data sale and the $16.5 million FTC order of 2024. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

The best labs, the worst buying route

Sophos Intercept X (3.5) would sit near the top on protection alone: AV-TEST 17.5 of 18 and Top Product, SE Labs AAA in both the enterprise and small-business categories, AV-Comparatives Approved, strong MITRE rounds, CryptoGuard rollback, and the MDR service the rest of the market measures itself against, with a published response SLA and a breach warranty. It is also British, headquartered in Abingdon since 1985. It is sixth because of how it is sold: Sophos publishes no price for Intercept X, and its own How to Buy page, read live, offers AWS Marketplace or a quote form and nothing else, so a UK small business cannot buy it with a card. Thoma Bravo, US private equity, has owned it since 2020. Trustpilot is 1.7 on 64 reviews. We mark down reseller-only buying by rule, and Sophos is the clearest case of a fine product behind a closed door. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

WithSecure Elements (3.4) is the Finnish business half of the old F-Secure, with EDR in the scored bundle, third-party patching included and a perfect 6/6/6 Top Product at AV-TEST in every 2026 round. The price we quote, about £47.77 a device a year at 25 devices, is a reseller's, because WithSecure publishes none and sells through partners; servers are a separate SKU at about £114 each, it does not enter the AV-Comparatives business test, and CVC took it private in March 2026. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

SentinelOne Singularity (3.3) has autonomous EDR with rollback in Complete at $179.99 an endpoint and one of only two official MCP servers here. Its own pricing page says all purchases go through an authorised partner, there is no GBP price, the old Core and Control tiers have left the price list, it has not entered an AV-Comparatives business test since 2017 and it withdrew from MITRE's 2025 round. Trustpilot is 2.7 on seven reviews. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

The rest of the field

ThreatDown by Malwarebytes (3.2) publishes the cheapest fixed-price MDR on this page: Core £57.04, Advanced with EDR £65.31, Elite with MDR £81.84, all in pounds with card checkout and ransomware rollback on every tier. The store caps each line at 20 devices, servers are an add-on at every tier, Core has no EDR and no MDR option, the last independent business test was 2022, and the SolarWinds-era attackers read some of Malwarebytes' own email in 2021. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

Trend Micro Worry-Free (3.0) puts Windows servers, Macs and mobiles in one licence and bundles Microsoft 365 email security from Advanced, but its UK pages publish no price, only a lead form, confirmed live; it does not run on Linux; its last AV-Comparatives business test was 2019 and not approved; the recent AV-TEST score belongs to Apex One; and CVE-2023-41179 was an exploited zero-day named against Worry-Free. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

Heimdal (2.8) bundles antivirus, ransomware encryption protection, patching, DNS filtering, privilege management and a 24/7 SOC into one Danish platform with a 3.8 on Trustpilot, and will not tell you what it costs without your phone number: the calculator is a lead form and the only fixed UK figures are public-sector G-Cloud listings at £48 a device a year. There is no result at any of the four independent labs for the business product, and the G-Cloud bundle's support is email and tickets, weekdays. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

The two we mark down

Acronis Cyber Protect (2.6) is a backup product with endpoint protection built in, and a decent one: Standard is £59 a workstation a year (£53.10 on offer) with a cloud or on-premises console, Advanced at £95 adds EDR, it scored 6/6/6 at AV-TEST in June 2026, took part in MITRE 2025 and includes 24/7 phone support. It is marked down by rule. Acronis was founded in 2003 by Serguei Beloussov, Ilya Zubarev and Max Tsyplyaev, ran Russian engineering until it announced on 4 March 2022 that it was suspending all operations in Russia, and its product and development chiefs today are Nick Grebennikoff and Yury Averkiev in Singapore; EQT has held the majority since 2024 and the company is Swiss and Singaporean. Add a server licence at about £649 a year, EDR that needs the cloud console, a 12GB data leak in March 2023 and labs that mostly test the MSP-only cloud edition, and 2.6 is where it lands. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations (2.0) is last, and we put the reason before the product. Kaspersky was founded in Moscow in 1997 and is run from there; Companies House records Eugene Kaspersky, Russian and resident in Russia, holding 75 per cent or more of the active UK company, while the older UK company is in liquidation. The United States banned its sale from 20 July 2024 and its updates from 29 September 2024, saying the Russian government had the capability and intent to exploit companies like it. The NCSC advised against Russia-based antivirus on sensitive government systems in 2017 and told exposed organisations to reconsider it in March 2022; Germany's BSI formally warned against it that month; Italy and Australia followed. The product is £31 a user a year with basic EDR, servers and mobiles in the same pool, card checkout, AAA at SE Labs and 6/6/6 at AV-TEST, and it has not entered a MITRE evaluation since 2019. Saaskly marks down security software with Russian links, and this is the clearest case there is. Not yet tested by Saaskly.

Bottom line

• Price the business tier per device per year, and check what it includes. Bitdefender Business Security £24.60 list (£17.22 on offer) with servers included; Avast Essential £26.90 renewal; Defender for Business £27.60 a user, servers extra; Kaspersky £31; ESET Entry £33.72; WithSecure about £47.77 via a reseller; ThreatDown Core £57.04; Acronis Standard £59, servers £649; CrowdStrike Falcon Go $59.99 or $7.99 monthly; SentinelOne Complete $179.99 via partners. Sophos, Trend Micro and Heimdal: quote only.
• EDR is the price you pay twice. Included at Microsoft, Kaspersky, SentinelOne and WithSecure; a tier up at Bitdefender (£54.40), ThreatDown (£65.31) and Acronis (£95); two tiers up at CrowdStrike ($184.99); unpriced at ESET, Sophos, Trend Micro and Heimdal; nowhere at Avast.
• Bitdefender GravityZone is the one we run and recommend, for one price across every platform, self-service buying and licensing, the labs and the Romanian ownership.
• ESET Protect if you want the cleanest lab sheet and the same buying route and can live without rollback and EDR on the entry plan; Microsoft Defender for Business if you are on Microsoft 365 and can live with servers as an add-on and no MDR; CrowdStrike Falcon Go if monthly billing and a trial matter more than EDR.
• Avast Business when the budget is the constraint and you accept there is no detection-and-response layer. Sophos if you have a reseller you trust and want the strongest protection and MDR here; the labs justify it, the buying route does not.
• Kaspersky and Acronis carry the mark-down for their Russian links, stated on every profile; the numbers on their pages are not the argument against them.

Prices checked 9 September 2026 on each vendor's UK pages in a UK browser, per device per year on a one-year term at about 25 devices, in pounds excluding VAT unless a profile says otherwise (CrowdStrike and SentinelOne quote UK buyers in US dollars; ThreatDown and Kaspersky do not state a VAT basis; WithSecure's prices are a reseller's). Lab results were read from AV-Comparatives, AV-TEST, SE Labs and MITRE where their sites allowed, otherwise from the vendor's citation of them, and the profile says which. Company records are from Companies House, SEC filings and the vendors' own pages. Trustpilot scores are from uk.trustpilot.com on the same day and most profiles are consumer-dominated. Saaskly has one affiliate link in this category, with Bitdefender through impact.com, joined on 9 September 2026 after the scores were set; it is disclosed on the profile and did not change the score. No other provider here has a link.