Google VirusTotal
Malware analysis tools
System security software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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$5,000 per year
Free Trial unavailable
Free version
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- Information technology and software
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- Professional services (engineering, legal, consulting, etc.)
What is Google VirusTotal
Google VirusTotal is a malware analysis and threat intelligence service that lets users submit files, URLs, domains, and IP addresses for scanning and reputation checks. Security teams and incident responders use it to triage suspicious artifacts, enrich investigations, and correlate detections across multiple security engines and data sources. The platform combines multi-engine scanning with community and partner-contributed telemetry, and offers enterprise features such as APIs, hunting, and workflow integrations.
Multi-engine detection coverage
VirusTotal scans submitted files and URLs against many antivirus and security engines in a single workflow. This helps analysts quickly compare detection results and identify consensus versus outliers. It is useful for initial triage when an organization needs a fast signal on whether an artifact is broadly recognized as malicious.
Broad artifact intelligence context
The service provides relationships and metadata across files, URLs, domains, and IPs to support investigation pivoting. Analysts can use these links to understand infrastructure reuse, distribution patterns, and related samples. This cross-artifact context supports threat hunting and incident scoping beyond a single sandbox run.
APIs and security workflows
VirusTotal offers APIs and enterprise capabilities that support automation in SOC workflows and integrations with other security tooling. Teams can programmatically submit artifacts, retrieve verdicts, and enrich alerts at scale. This makes it practical for operational use cases such as alert enrichment and case investigation.
Data sharing and exposure risk
Submitting files or URLs to a third-party service can create confidentiality and compliance concerns, especially for proprietary binaries or sensitive documents. Organizations often need strict policies on what can be uploaded and when. Some use cases require on-premises or isolated analysis environments that VirusTotal does not provide as a standalone deployment.
Not a full endpoint platform
VirusTotal focuses on analysis and intelligence rather than endpoint prevention, device management, or response actions. It does not replace endpoint security suites that provide policy enforcement, telemetry collection, and remediation. Teams typically use it as an enrichment and investigation layer alongside other controls.
Detections can be inconsistent
Multi-engine results can vary by vendor, signature freshness, and heuristic differences, which can produce conflicting verdicts. False positives and false negatives remain possible, particularly for new or targeted malware. Analysts still need validation steps such as behavioral analysis, internal telemetry correlation, and controlled detonation.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Community | Free | File & URL scanning via web UI, public API with community (non-commercial) usage quotas, community features. |
| Contributor | Free (upon acceptance) | For technology partners that contribute detection engines; feed of blindspots and contributor discounts/benefits upon program acceptance. |
| Lite | From $5,000 per year | Aimed at small teams/startups/SMBs (non-commercial); includes advanced search, YARA rule hunting, private scanning, private API access, file downloads; intended for low–moderate API usage. |
| Duet / Enterprise | Custom pricing (contact sales) | For large organizations; full feature set, highest API quotas, enterprise SLAs and custom contracts. |
Seller details
Google LLC
Mountain View, CA, USA
1998
Subsidiary
https://cloud.google.com/deep-learning-vm
https://x.com/googlecloud
https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/
