Pricing and Pricing Tiers
When you buy antivirus protection, the only decision typically required is how many licenses to get. With identity theft protection thrown into the mix, pricing systems range from more complicated to a lot more complicated.
Bitdefender comes in Individual and Family plans. The former protects up to five devices and one identity, while the latter extends to 25 devices and five identities. Family plans also add a parental control component. The basic Bitdefender Ultimate costs $159.99 per year, or $199.99 for a Family plan, but it doesn’t include identity theft remediation, just monitoring. Full-scale identity protection comes at the Plus level, for $189.99 or $269.99 per year. To max out your Bitdefender identity protection, you can upgrade to Plus Extended, at $249.99 for an Individual plan or $349.99 for a Family plan.
Norton also offers three tiers, Select, Advantage, and Ultimate+. Each successive tier offers more security suite and VPN licenses, more storage for online backups, and a wider range of identity protection features. You can also choose the Individual, Family (two adults), or Family & Kids plan at each tier, for a dizzying array of choices. A year of individual protection at the Ultimate+ level costs $349.99, $100 more than the equivalent Bitdefender Plus Extended subscription. Norton’s pricing ranges from $189.99 per year for an individual at the lowest tier (Select) to $819.99 per year for family and kids at the Ultimate+ tier.
Mix and match tiers and plans as you will, Bitdefender comes in with the better price.
Winner: Bitdefender
Core Antivirus Protection
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is at the core of Bitdefender’s suite, and Norton AntiVirus Plus provides essential features in Norton’s suite. I’ve already published a detailed comparison of these two advanced antivirus products. Bitdefender prevailed in some areas, such as pricing and ransomware protection, while Norton took the win for hands-on test scores and firewall defenses, for example. With all the categories accounted for, the contest ended in a tie, showing that both offer strong antivirus protection with advanced features.
Winner: Tie
VPN Protection
All products in the Bitdefender lineup include a VPN to protect your data as it travels the internet, though at levels below Premium and Ultimate, you pay extra to remove limits on bandwidth and server choice. Norton’s basic antivirus omits VPN protection, but a no-limits VPN is part of all Norton’s security suites. Neither of the top-tier suites compared here puts any limits on their VPN components in bandwidth or functionality.
A Bitdefender Individual plan lets you install VPN protection on five devices, while a Family plan covers 25. With Norton, the number of devices varies by tier. At the Select and Advantage tiers, you can install the VPN and security suite on five and 10 devices, respectively, but if you upgrade to Ultimate+, there’s no limit. Of course, the difference only matters if you need to protect more than 25 devices. Do you?
Both Bitdefender and Norton support the modern, open-source WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols. They both also support split tunneling and include a kill switch feature. Norton can automatically enable VPN protection when you connect to an unsecured network or use P2P. Bitdefender’s auto-connect system does the same and more, also allowing automatic VPN connection when using specific apps or websites.
Beyond the features shared by both, Bitdefender offers double-hop VPN connections for added security and VPN-level blocking of ads and trackers. It offers more server location choices and a better geographic spread, and its world map user interface is attractive. In the VPN realm, Bitdefender edges out Norton.
Winner: Bitdefender
Essential Security Suite Features
Most security suites include firewall protection, and these two are no exception. Parental control is another common feature found in both, though Bitdefender only includes it in the Family plan, and offers fewer parental features than Norton. Bitdefender’s OneClick Optimizer cleans up file and registry junk. Norton includes similar performance tune-up features as well as a startup program manager, and both include the ability to find and apply missing security patches.
Spam filtering used to be a standard suite feature, but now that so many people get spam filtered by webmail providers, it’s less important. Bitdefender retains spam filtering while Norton has dropped it.
You can think of backup as the ultimate security, protecting your files even if your computer falls into a hellmouth. Backup has long been a feature that distinguishes the best suites. You’ll find backup in all the Norton products, even the standalone antivirus. The difference is the amount of hosted storage for backups. At the Select tier, you get 100GB. That rises to 250GB with Advanced and 500GB with Ultimate+. As for Bitdefender, it dropped backup from Total Security nearly 10 years ago.
Norton rates about the same or slightly better in most of these feature areas, except for lacking a spam filter. And its powerful backup system, something Bitdefender doesn’t have, more than makes up for no antispam.
Winner: Norton
Monitoring for Signs of Identity Theft
No service can guarantee to prevent every attack on your identity. However, an early warning about suspicious activity can help you head off a full-scale attempt to steal your identity.
An identity theft attack has to start somewhere, and it’s often triggered by the exposure of your personal data in a breach. Both Norton and Bitdefender scan known data breaches for your info and notify you if it turns up in a new breach. They also monitor information exchanged on the dark web, in case your data is already being bought and sold. In either case, you need to work through all the warnings and take recommended actions like changing compromised passwords.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
An ongoing attack on your identity could well affect your credit score, so both services closely monitor your scores from the credit bureau. Bitdefender and Norton both track all three bureaus at the top tier, but just one at the next-lower tier. Both provide monthly reports on the bureaus they track, but Norton Ultimate+ subscribers get daily reports from one bureau.
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Odd transactions and anomalous activity in your financial accounts could be a sign that your identity has been compromised. At its top tier, Bitdefender watches for things like transactions outside the normal range and keeps an eye on retirement accounts. Norton does the same, and also tracks ongoing expenditures for unexpected changes.
At the top Plus Extended tier, Bitdefender watches for abuse of your SSN, reports unauthorized change of address events, and scans court records. Norton performs the same monitoring but doesn’t limit that protection to its top tier. It watches for quite a few other possible indicators of identity abuse, including the creation of fictitious identities, phone takeover attempts, and attacks on your home’s title. Norton tracks more warning signs of possible identity theft than Bitdefender does.
Winner: Norton
Watch a modern crime drama and you’re likely to see agents perusing a suspect’s social media accounts, looking for clues. Criminals can do the same to get clues about you. Yes, PCMag advises you to avoid sharing too much on social media and to lock down who can see your posts, but are you always vigilant?
Once you give it access to your social media accounts, Bitdefender watches those accounts for posts that might reveal too much personal information and possibly inappropriate posts. Specifically, it tracks Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube with the help of partner ZeroFox. Norton does the same, also relying on ZeroFox, but adds tracking of LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Yes, you could probably skip this feature if you’re careful and cautious about what you post and who gets to see your posts. But Bitdefender has another weapon in its social media defense arsenal. Its Impersonation Check feature scours dozens of social media sites and reports any that look like they might be yours. Once you discard your actual accounts, any that remain are probably social media impersonators. These fake accounts can spread malware, damage your reputation, and steal data from your friends, so you’ll want to have them removed.
Winner: Bitdefender
Prevent Identity Theft
Imagine going to sell your house and finding out it’s encumbered with a home equity line of credit that “you” took out years ago. Signing up for credit in someone else’s name is a common trick for identity thieves, and one easy way to foil such tricks is to put a freeze on your credit. With a freeze in place, nobody, not even you, can open a new credit account in your name. If you need to buy a car or finance a home theater, you just remove the freeze temporarily.
Setting up a credit freeze with the three big credit bureaus is free, but it’s nice to have help. Both Bitdefender and Norton offer a page explaining how a credit freeze works, with DIY links to the freeze pages for the three bureaus.
(Credit: Norton/PCMag)
Norton takes the lockdown process quite a bit farther, though. Ultimate+ subscribers can invoke Identity Lock from TransUnion, which prevents opening new accounts or payday loans. It can also freeze the creation of new bank accounts or bogus utility accounts. Norton is the top contender in the realm of freezing your accounts against unwanted change.
Winner: Norton
Recovery From Identity Theft
Losing your wallet (or having it stolen) is a pain. You have to cancel your credit cards, notify your bank, request new ID cards, and so on. The process is a lot easier if you’re very clear on exactly what was in that lost wallet. Both Norton and Bitdefender provide a spot to record all details about the contents of your wallet. And with either service, you can get help from a recovery agent to go through all the necessary steps.
(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)
Reporting possible identity theft to either service creates a case. To handle that case, the service assigns you a personal recovery agent, trained in the ins and outs of remediating identity theft. Both promise to stick with you until they’ve fixed all the problems stemming from your incident. Without the ability to test them by somehow creating an actual identity theft incident, I can’t say whether one is better than the other.
Winner: Tie
Payment for Expenses Caused by Identity Theft
LifeLock introduced the million-dollar service guarantee long before Norton bought it. If you got caught up in an identity theft scheme despite having LifeLock protection, the company promised to spend up to a million dollars making things right. That’s become the baseline—all the identity theft services I track offer at least a million-dollar guarantee.
At the Plus tier, Bitdefender matches that baseline; at the Plus Extended level, it doubles the guarantee to $2 million. There are some restrictions on how that money is spent, though. For example, Bitdefender covers lost wages, but at no more than $1,500 per week for up to eight weeks, and there’s a maximum of $1,000 for elder care or childcare. Upgrading to Plus Extended also makes two additional funds of $25,000 available specifically to cover damages from ransomware and from social media account takeover.
(Credit: Bitdefender/PCMag)
All Norton customers are guaranteed up to $1 million toward such expenses as paying lawyers and experts. A separate fund specifically covers reimbursing stolen funds, up to $25,000 at the Select tier, $100,000 at the Advantage tier, and $1 million for Ultimate+ subscribers. Another fund dedicated to reimbursing personal expenses for identity theft remediation comes in at the same three levels. Those subscribing at the Ultimate+ level have a total of $3 million in funds backing their recovery.
In addition, Norton doesn’t parcel out the cash with sub-limits for things like lost wages and childcare the way Bitdefender does. All approved expenses come from the same pot. Norton’s a clear winner as far as cash backing for recovery.
Winner: Norton
