The Android Antivirus Question Nobody Answers Honestly

A banner on a sports website claims a phone has seven viruses and offers a paid app to remove them. Many users face this exact prompt, and the usual replies, "you must have antivirus" or "you never need it", are both slogans rather than answers. The real answer depends on how that phone gets used, and the evidence is easier to weigh than the slogans suggest.

Android antivirus necessity concept illustration

Short answer: if you install apps only from Google Play and keep the phone updated, you probably do not need a separate antivirus for malware alone. If you sideload, run an old phone, tap a lot of links in messages, or worry about theft and spying, there are real reasons to add one. The numbers below show the gap is smaller than the antivirus industry says and larger than the "never bother" crowd admits.

What Android already does for you

Every certified Android phone ships with Google Play Protect. In its review of 2025, Google reports that Play Protect scans more than 350 billion apps a day and flagged over 27 million new malicious apps that came from outside Google Play. Before apps reach the store, Google says it stopped 1.75 million policy-violating submissions and banned more than 80,000 developer accounts last year.

Play Protect is not only matching known samples. Since November 2024, live threat detection has watched how apps behave on the device, which is meant to catch apps that stay quiet for a while before doing anything suspicious. It launched on Pixel 6 and newer, with other brands promised later. Around it sit the quieter protections: app sandboxing, permission prompts, Safe Browsing in Chrome, and Find Hub for locating, locking and wiping a lost phone.

Android is also getting harder to steal from. Android 15 added Theft Detection Lock and Offline Device Lock, and AV-Comparatives notes that Android 16 hides one-time codes on the lock screen in higher-risk situations, such as when the phone is offline and has not been unlocked recently.

What the independent labs found

Marketing claims are cheap, so look at lab results instead. For its 2026 mobile review, AV-Comparatives tested in May on an unmodified Android 16 phone, using 3,156 recent malicious apps and a separate set of 500 clean apps to count false alarms. Selected results:

ProductMalware blockedFalse alarms (of 500)
Bitdefender Mobile Security100%2
Avast One Free, AVG AntiVirus Free, Norton 360 Deluxe (same engine)99.6%2
G DATA Mobile Security99.2%4
Google Play Protect and Android's built-in features98.9%8

Source: AV-Comparatives Mobile Security Review 2026, test period May 2026. The full report covers more products than shown here.

Read plainly, Play Protect blocked 98.9% of the samples and wrongly flagged 8 clean apps. That is a strong result, and it is also the lowest score in the table. AV-Comparatives only certifies a product that blocks at least 99%, raises no more than 10 false alarms and keeps battery impact under 8%, so Google missed certification by a small margin. In absolute terms, the gap between 98.9% and 99.6% works out to roughly 22 apps out of 3,156.

It was not always that close. In an older AV-TEST round on Android 8, Play Protect found just under 55% of the infected apps at best, while ten of the security apps caught everything. Different labs, different samples and different Android versions mean you should not line those numbers up too neatly, but the direction is clear. The built-in scanner improved a great deal. AV-TEST also publishes its own Play Protect results, which are worth a look if you want a second lab's view.

One caution about all of this. A lab test runs a pile of malicious APK files collected over a few weeks. It measures detection, not how likely you are to run into malware in daily life.

The official store is not a guarantee

In August 2025, researchers at Zscaler ThreatLabz reported 77 malicious apps on Google Play with more than 19 million installs between them, including decoys for the Anatsa banking trojan. The trick was a dropper. The app looked harmless in the store, then pulled down the real payload after install, disguised as an update. The Register's coverage notes that Google said it had already dealt with the problems before the report came out, and the apps were removed.

That is the awkward fact for anyone who says the Play Store alone is enough. It does not mean you should avoid the store. It means the store lowers your risk without erasing it, and AV-Comparatives puts it in six words:

"Low risk" does not mean "no risk."AV-Comparatives, Mobile Security Review 2026

The cheapest defence is still reading the permission prompt. A document reader that asks for access it has no use for deserves suspicion, however many installs it shows.

Where a security app adds something

Malware scanning is the part Android already does well. The extras are where the tested apps differ from the built-in tools:

  • Link checking outside Chrome. Safe Browsing is built into Chrome, but several of the tested apps add web protection that works in other browsers, and Bitdefender checks links in SMS and chat apps, and Norton checks incoming texts.
  • Breach alerts. Avast, AVG and Bitdefender include checks on whether your email address has turned up in a data leak.
  • Theft extras. In AV-Comparatives' testing, every one of Google's anti-theft commands worked, so the built-in tools are enough for many people. Some apps add a lock when the SIM card is swapped, or a front-camera photo after failed unlock attempts.
  • Files, not just apps. AV-Comparatives points out that Play Protect focuses on installed apps, while third-party products often scan files and storage as well.

There are limits. Android keeps tightening what third-party apps are allowed to do, and AV-Comparatives notes that some vendors dropped remote wipe on Android 14 and later. The same report argues that in Western markets, data loss and identity theft are a bigger practical worry than malware. A security app that only scans files is aimed at the smaller problem.

The sideloading rules are changing

This matters most if you install apps from outside Google Play. Google's developer verification was scheduled to begin enforcement on 30 September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, with a global rollout planned for 2027, according to Android Authority. Check Google's current announcements for where it stands today.

Under the new system, apps from developers who have registered with Google install as normal. For apps from unregistered developers, there is an "advanced flow" that 9to5Google describes as a one-time wait of 24 hours, with warnings along the way. Installing over ADB is not affected.

The change adds friction for anonymous apps without scanning anything. A verified developer can still publish something harmful, so it supports good judgment rather than replacing it. Sideloading is also where stalkerware usually comes from, since it is kept out of Google Play, as AV-Comparatives explains in its stalkerware test.

A quick way to decide

Answer these five questions about your own phone:

  1. Do you ever install APKs from outside Google Play, including ones forwarded in chat apps or file-sharing tools? If yes, adding a certified security app to scan them before install is reasonable.
  2. Is the phone still getting security updates? Google publishes monthly Android Security Bulletins. If your model has dropped off, a security app cannot patch the operating system. Replace the phone when you can, and be stricter about what you install until then.
  3. Do you tap links in SMS and messaging apps? If so, a product that checks those links covers something the built-in tools do not.
  4. Do you handle banking or work accounts on the phone? Turn on Enhanced Protection in Chrome's Safe Browsing settings and use a second factor everywhere it is offered, before spending money on anything.
  5. Could someone close to you want to monitor your phone? Check Play Protect's scan results and review which apps have device admin or accessibility access. If you suspect stalkerware, removing it can alert the person who installed it, so speak to a support organisation such as the Coalition Against Stalkerware first.

If you answered no to all five, the built-in protection is doing most of the job and a second scanner mostly duplicates it.

If you do install one

Start from a list of certified products rather than a search result. AV-Comparatives keeps a list of mobile security vendors, and it warns that rogue antivirus apps with inadequate security are a real problem, which it examined in an earlier test of 250 apps. A scareware banner is never a reason to install anything.

A security app needs broad access to do its job, which is exactly why the vendor matters more than the feature list. Read what it asks for. Free versions are often ad-supported, and in the review AVG's free tier required consent to personalised advertising during setup. That may be fine for you, but you should know about it before you tap accept.

So, does Android need antivirus?

For many people, no. The built-in protection is strong, it is improving, and a lab score of 98.9% against 99.6% is a smaller gap than the sales pages suggest. But "no" comes with conditions: apps from Google Play, regular updates and a habit of questioning permissions.

For people who sideload, run an unsupported phone, or want link checking, breach alerts and extra theft tools, a certified security app adds something real. Choose it for those extras, not for the malware scanning that Android already provides, and choose carefully, because the category has its own bad actors.

Sources and further reading

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