Top 5 Lightest Antivirus Software That Use Less Memory

We all are very conscious when it comes to programs using our systems’ memory, especially the ones running in the background. We should be conscious because programs running at start-up and using too much memory can have severe effects on overall performance of our computers. Such programs could be the antivirus/security software that we use in order to make sure the system is protected from viruses, Trojans, malicious software etc. Today I will be testing some antivirus software in order to see how much memory they use.

Users of newer systems, such as the PCs with Corei3 and Corei5 and higher performance processors, may not find it as an issue, but computers that are comparatively older in model may run slower due to the security software. We have used software called Sysinternals Process Explorer for this test.  Long story short, astonishingly the results were different than we expected. Here are the top 5 Lightest Antivirus software that use lesser memory.

 5 – Norton Antivirus

Number of Processes: 4
Processes Monitored: ccsvchst.exe, ccsvchst.exe, ccsvchst.exe, ccsvchst.exe

Idle Working Set (KB): 59,304
Idle Private Working Set (KB): 19,362

Scan Working Set (KB): 111,094
Scan Private Working Set (KB): 52,576

4 – Panda Cloud Antivirus Free

Number of Processes: 4
Processes Monitored: PSUNMain.exe, PSUAService.exe, PSUAMain.exe, and PSANHost.exe

Idle Working Set (KB): 31,714
Idle Private Working Set (KB): 20,340

Scan Working Set (KB): 76,498
Scan Private Working Set (KB): 41,172

3 – Comodo Antivirus Free

Number of Processes: 4
Processes Monitored: cavwp.exe, cis.exe, CisTray.exe, cmdagent.exe

Idle Working Set (KB): 39,664
Idle Private Working Set (KB): 14,954

Scan Working Set (KB): 105,317
Scan Private Working Set (KB): 34,453

2 – Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus

Number of Processes: 2
Processes Monitored: WRSA.exe, WRSA.exe

Idle Working Set (KB): 3,823
Idle Private Working Set (KB): 2,726

Scan Working Set (KB): 9,949
Scan Private Working Set (KB): 7,673

1 – Avast Free Antivirus

Number of Processes: 2
Processes Monitored: AvastSvc.exe, AvastUI.exe

Idle Working Set (KB): 9,706
Idle Private Working Set (KB): 4,290

Scan Working Set (KB): Resets every 10 seconds
Scan Private Working Set (KB): Resets every 10 seconds

So as you can see Avast Free Antivirus tops the list, which makes it the so far the Lightest Antivirus Software that uses lesser memory.