Total AV vs PC Matic: Two Very Different Ideas of Protection

Fix it now

These two disagree about what protection is. PC Matic publishes SuperShield, a default-deny allowlist that blocks every application not on its global list of known good software and sends the blocked file to its research team for a verdict within 24 hours. Total AV is a conventional scanner sold across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, at 4, 6 or 8 devices depending on the tier.

1. Buy PC Matic if the PC runs a small, stable set of familiar software and its user keeps getting caught by things a scanner missed. Default-deny is the strongest answer available to a brand new executable.
2. Buy PC Matic if you want automatic patching alongside it. Its home product publishes vulnerability automatic patch management and a Cloud Scheduler.
3. Buy Total AV if new software arrives on the machine regularly – games, mods, installers, self-compiled tools. An allowlist will interrupt that several times a week.
4. Buy Total AV if you need one subscription across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. PC Matic’s home security page lists Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11 and up to 3 home computers.
5. Buy Total AV Internet Security or Total Security if you want the VPN, ad blocking or the password manager. Total VPN and Total Adblock arrive at Internet Security; Total Password at Total Security.
6. Skip both if you want to spend nothing. Microsoft Defender is already installed, updated with Windows, and is a legitimate baseline.

Neither vendor publishes whose detection engine is inside its product. Any comparison that tells you TotalAV licences a named third-party engine is asserting something the vendor does not publish, so do not let it influence the decision.

If the allowlist model suits the machine or clearly does not, you are done. Below is how each model fails, what each vendor publishes in each tier, and who each one actually suits.

Why it happens

The conventional model, which Total AV follows, is default allow. Code runs, and the product watches it: signatures for known families, heuristics for suspicious structure, behavioural monitoring once it executes, and cloud reputation for files nobody has seen. TotalAV publishes real-time antivirus protection, malware elimination, zero-day cloud scanning, protection against potentially unwanted applications, phishing scam protection and ransomware protection across its range, with WebShield handling web requests. The failure mode is always the same shape: something genuinely new runs for a while before anything objects.

PC Matic inverts that, and publishes the inversion in plain words. SuperShield is described as its real-time protection allowlisting component, deploying a default-deny approach that blocks all unknown applications from running, against a global list of known good applications identified with digital signature technology. SuperShield blocks everything not on the list and notifies the user that the software has been blocked. The failure mode inverts with it: instead of letting something new through, the product stops something new that was perfectly fine.

PC Matic also publishes what happens next, which is the part that decides whether the model is usable. All blocked applications are sent to its malware research team and categorised as safe or malicious within 24 hours, and a user can enable advanced mode to run the file immediately. So the friction is bounded – a day, or a decision by whoever is at the keyboard – and both halves of that matter. A day is fine for a machine that rarely changes. It is not fine for a machine where somebody wants to install something now.

One claim this article no longer makes: that Total AV licences its detection engine from another vendor. TotalAV publishes no such statement and names no third-party engine, so the honest position is that nobody outside the company knows. That is not a criticism – most vendors say nothing about engine provenance – but it does mean the frequently repeated version of this comparison is asserting something it cannot support.

Full reference

The two models, and how each one fails

Total AV’s three tiers

The tier ladder here is a bundle ladder, not a protection ladder. The scanning and web protection are the same on all three; what changes is the device count and whether the VPN, the ad blocker and the password manager are included.

Where PC Matic wins, and what the win costs

On a machine whose software set does not change, default-deny is the strongest answer available to a novel executable, and no amount of engine tuning on the conventional side matches it. A freshly compiled ransomware binary is unknown by definition, and the allowlist stops it as a category rather than having to recognise it. That is genuinely effective for the classic problem case: a relative who clicks things, a shared family desktop, a reception machine, a PC that exists to do online banking and print a boarding pass.

The cost is friction, and the friction lands on whoever is sitting at the keyboard. PC Matic’s own description of the resolution path is honest about this: a blocked application produces a notification, goes to the research team for a verdict within 24 hours, and can be run immediately if the user enables advanced mode. That second option is the risk. If the person at the machine will use advanced mode to make every interruption stop, the protection evaporates and you have bought an inconvenience.

Where Total AV wins, and what to ignore inside it

Total AV behaves the way people expect antivirus to behave. It installs, it scans, it filters web requests through WebShield, and nothing you download stops working because a list has not caught up. For a household that installs software regularly, that predictability is worth more than the theoretical advantage of default-deny, because a security control people fight with is a security control people disable.

Ignore most of the optimiser. Disk cleaner and browser cleaning duplicate Storage Sense and what the browser already does, and speed claims attached to that kind of tool are the weakest part of any pitch in this market. Buy the subscription for the resident protection, the web filtering and one client across a mixed set of devices, and treat the tune-up screens as decoration.

Which one, by situation

• A parent or grandparent who has been infected more than once and installs almost nothing: PC Matic, with the expectation set that occasional blocks are the product working.
• A family PC where teenagers install games, mods and launchers: Total AV or another conventional suite. An allowlist will be overridden into uselessness within a month.
• A machine used for development, niche engineering tools or anything self-compiled: not PC Matic.
• A single-purpose PC for banking and email that never changes: PC Matic is a strong fit, and its automatic patch management suits an unattended machine.
• One subscription covering Windows, Mac, Android and iOS in the same household: Total AV.
• You want to spend nothing: Microsoft Defender is already installed and already updated with Windows. Neither purchase is compulsory.

Two things neither product does

Neither replaces backups. An allowlist that stops ransomware running and a scanner that catches it are both preventive controls, and if either fails what you have left is whatever copy you made beforehand. Keep one on an external drive and disconnect it between runs.

Neither is a reason to postpone Windows updates. PC Matic publishes automatic patch management for vulnerable programs and that is useful, but the operating system’s own updates are the layer underneath everything else, and no antivirus in this comparison substitutes for them.

Questions people ask about this