Kaspersky Plus
Review (2026)

There is no honest way to review Kaspersky software in 2026 without addressing the elephant in the room. Kaspersky Lab is a Russian-owned cybersecurity company. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the US government banned federal use of Kaspersky products outright, with later legislation extending that ban to private-sector US sales. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre advised government departments and operators of critical national infrastructure to consider alternatives, citing the risk that a hostile state could compel a Russian-based company to act against the interests of its users.

None of that changes the fact that, technically, Kaspersky's antivirus engine is one of the strongest in the consumer market. Independent labs have for years ranked it among the very top performers on raw detection — often ahead of brands with much larger marketing budgets. Kaspersky Plus, the mid-tier consumer product, bundles antivirus with an unlimited VPN and a password manager at a price that is competitive with the rest of the field.

We tested it. Here is what we found, and what we would think about before running it on a personal device.

How we tested

Detection performance — among the best on the market

On detection alone, Kaspersky is excellent. The safe-browsing module flagged 230 of our 240 phishing URLs — very strong, comparable to the leaders. All twelve sideloaded Android malware samples were caught and quarantined cleanly. The heuristic engine is aggressive and behaviour-aware, similar in approach to Bitdefender's. We saw it block two behaviour-only test samples without any signature match — exactly the kind of proactive protection that distinguishes the leaders from the field.

False positive control is tight. We recorded two minor alerts on fifty known-clean apps, both on niche developer tools that surface across most engines. If we were ranking purely on a per-test basis, Kaspersky would be among the top three antivirus engines on the market. It really is that good at its core job.

Features — competitive bundle, genuinely usable VPN

Kaspersky Plus is well-specced for the tier:

• Real-time virus and malware protection across up to 3 devices
• Unlimited VPN with no daily cap
• Password manager with cross-device sync
• "Smart Home Monitor" — flags unfamiliar devices on your Wi-Fi
• Data-leak checker for email-linked breaches
• System cleaner and performance optimiser
• Anti-phishing protection for online banking

The unlimited VPN is the most concrete advantage Kaspersky Plus has over Bitdefender's bundled VPN in the equivalent tier. Speed in our testing was around 70–75% of our unprotected line speed on a 300 Mbps connection — slightly slower than a dedicated VPN provider but more than fast enough for everyday browsing, video and basic privacy use. Server coverage spans most major regions and unblocked the streaming catalogues we tried.

The password manager and Smart Home Monitor are useful add-ons rather than reasons to pick the suite. The data-leak checker is well-implemented — when we plugged in a known-compromised test email it correctly flagged the affected breaches and provided clear remediation steps.

User experience, system impact and telemetry

The desktop interface has been substantially modernised across recent versions. It is clean, well-organised, and easier to navigate than Norton's. The mobile experience is similarly polished. There is nothing about the day-to-day use of Kaspersky Plus that feels dated or awkward — it is a mature, considered product.

System impact is light. Idle CPU stayed under 1%. Active scans hovered between 18% and 30%, on the lower end of the field. Battery impact on the Pixel over 72 hours was around 4–5%, mid-pack. The product is well-behaved with modern hardware.

Telemetry settings are presented transparently in the privacy section of the dashboard. Users can disable participation in Kaspersky Security Network (the cloud reputation backend), and granular data-sharing options are individually toggleable. The defaults are more telemetry-heavy than some competitors — worth changing on first run — but the controls themselves are present, labelled and operate as documented in our testing.

Pros and cons at a glance

The verdict

We are stuck in an awkward position. Kaspersky Plus is technically one of the best consumer antivirus products available in 2026. The detection engine, the bundled unlimited VPN, the clean interface, and the light system footprint would, on technical grounds alone, place it firmly in our top three.

Geopolitics complicates things. For most UK home users with no link to government, defence, or critical national infrastructure, the practical risk is probably low — but the regulatory direction of travel is clear, and we would be reluctant to recommend Kaspersky to organisations or individuals operating in sensitive areas. For everyone else, the calculation depends on how heavily you weight a low-but-real supply-chain risk against an otherwise excellent product.

If the geopolitics rule Kaspersky out for you — and that is an entirely defensible position — there are alternatives in this comparison with similar detection scores and similar bundled extras, and fewer awkward conversations.