EDR vs Antivirus: Cost and What You Actually Get
Antivirus costs $1-5/endpoint/year. EDR costs $36-180/endpoint/year. Here is exactly what that 10-50x price difference buys you, and whether your organisation actually needs it.
| Capability | Traditional AV | NGAV | EDR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost (100 ep) | $100-500 | $3,000-4,500 | $3,600-18,000 |
| Signature detection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Behavioural detection | Limited | Yes | Yes (deep) |
| Fileless attack detection | Rarely | Partial | Yes |
| Ransomware rollback | No | Some | Yes |
| Process telemetry recording | No | No | Yes |
| Incident investigation | No | Limited | Full timeline |
| Endpoint isolation | No | Partial | Yes |
| Threat hunting | No | No | Yes (analyst or built-in) |
| Forensic replay | No | No | Yes (retention period) |
| Cyber insurance eligibility | Declining | Usually yes | Yes |
EDR vs Antivirus FAQ
How much more expensive is EDR than antivirus?
Traditional antivirus costs $1 to $5 per endpoint per year for business products (Bitdefender, Norton, ESET basic). EDR costs $3 to $15 per endpoint per month, which is $36 to $180 per endpoint per year. This makes EDR approximately 10 to 50 times more expensive than traditional antivirus. However, next-gen antivirus (NGAV) products like Sophos Intercept X base tier or Microsoft Defender Plan 1 are priced between antivirus and EDR at $25 to $45 per endpoint per year and include behavioural detection without full EDR telemetry.
Is traditional antivirus still sufficient for business protection in 2026?
Traditional signature-based antivirus is no longer sufficient for business protection in 2026. Modern attack techniques including fileless malware, living-off-the-land (LotL) attacks, and ransomware that disables AV before executing are designed specifically to evade signature detection. Most cyber insurers no longer accept traditional antivirus as adequate endpoint protection. NGAV (behavioural detection without full EDR) provides a meaningful improvement over traditional AV at lower cost than full EDR, and is the minimum acceptable standard for most insurance policies.
What does EDR provide that antivirus cannot?
EDR provides four capabilities that antivirus cannot: (1) Continuous telemetry recording - EDR logs every process execution, file modification, network connection, and registry change, enabling forensic investigation after an incident. (2) Behavioural detection - EDR detects malicious patterns of behaviour rather than relying on known malware signatures, catching novel and fileless attacks. (3) Active response - EDR can isolate infected devices, terminate malicious processes, and roll back changes automatically or on analyst command. (4) Attack timeline reconstruction - after an incident, EDR provides a complete timeline of attacker actions, enabling root cause analysis and gap remediation.
Which businesses still only need antivirus and not EDR?
Very few business environments can justify running only traditional antivirus in 2026. Personal devices, very small organisations (under 5 employees) with no sensitive data, and purely offline systems with no internet connectivity are the main exceptions. For any business handling customer data, financial information, employee records, or intellectual property, EDR or at minimum NGAV is now considered a baseline security requirement. Most SMBs with 10 or more endpoints should be running at least Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 (included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium) or equivalent NGAV.