Norton has come a long way since the early days as one of the best antivirus applications on the market. While it’s still one of the best antivirus platforms around today, now it also offers VPNs, password managers, and even identity theft protection services.
Like many of Norton’s products, you can buy LifeLock on its own or in a Norton360 bundle. Naturally, this increases the monthly price significantly. Especially once you start comparing it to services like Aura, which also include a VPN, password manager, and antivirus protection. So is LifeLock worth signing up for? Let’s take a look at their plans and features to see what will be the best option for you.
Key Features
Up to $3 million in coverage per adult spread across three categories of coverage
Unique fictitious identity monitoring we rarely see with competitors
One click to freeze your TransUnion credit file
Credit monitoring in all plans with three-bureau credit monitoring in the premium plan
High-quality apps that let you use all the features your plan comes with
Plans and Prices for Norton LifeLock
Our LifeLock dashboard after we purchased our subscription.
LifeLock gave us a lot of plans to choose from — and we liked having the options — but we can see how some people could get overwhelmed. There isn’t a good page on LifeLock’s site to compare all the plans you can choose from. The pages show only the bundles with Norton 360 or the individual LifeLock plans.
FYI: Norton 360 is a bundle of device protection services that includes antivirus software and a VPN. You can install Norton 360 on five, 10, or unlimited devices, depending on the LifeLock tier you bundle it with.
We made a table to compare the prices of every plan. Note that the prices are for the first year if you pay annually.
LifeLock Standard and Select
LifeLock Advantage
LifeLock Ultimate Plus
Individual plan
$7.50 per month
$14.99 per month
$19.99 per month
2 adults plan
$12.49 per month
$23.99 per month
$32.99 per month
Family plan
$18.49 per month
$29.99 per month
$38.99 per month
Individual plan with Norton 360
$8.33 per month
$16.67 per month
$25.00 per month
2 adults plan with Norton 360
$13.24 per month
$24.99 per month
$34.99 per month
Family plan with Norton 360
$18.99 per month
$30.99 per month
$40.99 per month
If you’re not ready to pay for a year upfront, expect to pay about twice as much as you would with an annual plan.
FYI: These prices are for the first year only. When it comes to renewing, your price will increase by up to 52 percent.
Norton LifeLock’s Free Trial
We got a free trial of LifeLock Ultimate Plus to test its capabilities.
Norton LifeLock has a 30-day free trial, but it takes a little bit of effort to unlock it. If you go directly to the LifeLock website, Norton will try signing you up for a membership without offering you a free trial. But if you Google “LifeLock free trial,” one of the first results will be a website offering you a 30-day free trial with no restrictions.
When we were on the checkout page, we noticed the promo code for the free trial. So if you don’t find the free trial page, type in ALL30DF in the “enter promo code” fiel, and it will unlock it for you.
Pro Tip: You can sign up for LifeLock’s family plan as a free trial. It’s a great way to see how its parental controls can help you keep an eye on how your kids use their devices. Before you sign up, read through our list of the best family identity theft protection services to see if another option would be better for you.
Even though getting the free trial wasn’t as easy as we hoped, we could use it on any plan we wanted. That impressed us. Most companies force you to do a free trial of the highest-priced plan, so you get charged a lot when you forget to cancel the trial before the auto-bill date. But you still can sign up for the premium plan like we did.
LifeLock Plan Differences (and a Few of Our Favorites)
Each LifeLock plan has different features, except for the Standard and Select plans. They’re the same plan, except it’s called LifeLock Select instead of LifeLock Standard when bundled with Norton 360. We’re not sure why there’s an inconsistency in naming, and it makes things more confusing when trying to compare plans. They are the same though.
With that in mind, we made a table comparing the features included with each LifeLock plan.
LifeLock Standard and Select
LifeLock Advantage
LifeLock Ultimate Plus
Identity and SSN alerts
Yes
Yes
Yes
Credit monitoring
1 bureau
1 bureau
3 bureaus
Insurance for lawyers and experts
$1 million per adult
$1 million per adult
$1 million per adult
Personal expense compensation
$25,000 per adults
$100,000 per adult
$1 million per adult
Stolen funds reimbursement
$25,000 per adult
$100,000 per adult
$1 million per adult
Dark web monitoring
Yes
Yes
Yes
TransUnion credit freeze
No
Yes
Yes
Fictitious identity monitoring
No
Yes
Yes
Bank account activity alerts
No
Yes
Yes
401(k) and investment activity alerts
No
No
Yes
Social media monitoring
No
No
Yes
Bank account takeover alerts
No
No
Yes
Since we tested the Ultimate Plus plan, we got to use all the features. We’ll cover the extra features in each plan to make it clear what you can expect. We’ll include screenshots of us using the service, too, so you can see what you’re signing up for.
LifeLock Standard and Select
When we signed up for our LifeLock plan, we needed to permit LifeLock to obtain our credit data. That made us nervous when we first read it, but all the best credit monitoring and protection services need that permission. Accessing our credit data is how the company monitors our credit for signs of identity theft, so we permitted it. In the same vein, we needed to provide our Social Security number too.
Here’s what our LifeLock dark web monitoring alert looked like.
To our surprise, the only alert we received when we tested LifeLock was included as a feature in its least expensive plan. Just under two hours after we finished creating our account and activating our subscription, we received an email alert that it found our information on the dark web.
That was impressive, but we wanted to learn more about it. We bought cryptocurrencies as an investment several years back and figured it had to do with that. After clicking the big “Review this activity” button, we were brought to a page describing what was included in the alert, what the alert meant, and how LifeLock found the leak.
LifeLock gave us information on its alerts and how we could minimize our risks.
As you can see from the screenshot of our alert description, LifeLock scans its dark web database that goes back to 2008. That means if any of your information was leaked on the dark web since 2008, like ours was, you’ll be notified and LifeLock will help you take action. Thankfully, the only information that leaked was an old email address we no longer use.
Did You Know? Some identity thieves don’t use your identity themselves. Instead, they sell it on the dark web for someone else to use. Dark web monitoring keeps an eye out for your information on these anonymous marketplaces so you can take action before your identity gets sold.
On top of dark web monitoring, the Standard and Select plans include identity and Social Security Number monitoring. We imagine those alerts would look the same as our dark web alert, but we didn’t receive any. There’s also one-bureau credit monitoring and over $1 million in total identity recovery insurance spread across three categories.
LifeLock Advantage
The main features you’ll be paying for are the TransUnion Credit Lock and three-bureau credit freeze capabilities.
Credit Lock let us temporarily freeze our credit with a simple toggle.
The Credit Lock feature lets you lock your TransUnion credit file at the click of a button. Normally, when you freeze your credit file, it takes time to freeze and unfreeze it. That means if you suddenly need a new line of credit, you’ll need to wait until your credit files unfreeze to apply.
With the Credit Lock toggle, we could essentially freeze and unfreeze our TransUnion credit file at the click of a button. To take advantage of that flexibility and maximize our security, we turned on TransUnion Credit Lock and froze our credit file with the other two bureaus. That way, if we need to urgently apply for a new line of credit, we can click off our Credit Lock and find a creditor that accepts TransUnion credit checks to get a credit line immediately.
Freezing our credit files was easy with LifeLock’s help.
Basically, with Credit Lock, you can get the benefits of freezing all your credit files without 90 percent of the drawbacks. You also get fictitious identity monitoring, which keeps an eye out for synthetic identity theft. LifeLock gives alerts for suspicious activity related to your credit, checking, and savings accounts.
LifeLock Ultimate Plus
The biggest advantage of going with an Ultimate Plus plan is the increased insurance coverage. The $3 million of total coverage per adult is the best in the industry. We could get up to $5 million in coverage when we tested Aura’s family plan, but in the fine print, it states it’s $1 million per adult. We cover all the differences in our Aura vs. LifeLock comparison.
That’s the biggest reason, but it’s far from the only one. We also got access to three-bureau credit monitoring. Some creditors check only one credit bureau when processing a credit check. With three-bureau credit monitoring, suspicious activity gets caught every time. One-bureau credit monitoring can let some small credit checks through.
LifeLock’s Credit Services gave us tips to improve our credit score.
There are also more monitoring services. We can’t think of anything that isn’t monitored with the Ultimate Plus plan. The company even monitored social media for our information. During our time with LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan, we felt like our identity was safe.
Norton 360 Bundle
Any of the LifeLock plans can be bundled with Norton 360. With any of the bundles, you’ll get full access to Norton 360. The only difference is the number of devices the plan supports. Here’s how many devices each plan supports:
Norton 360 with LifeLock Select bundles support up to five devices
Norton 360 with LifeLock Advantage bundles support up to 10 devices
Norton 360 with LifeLock Ultimate Plus bundles support unlimited devices
It surprised us that they changed the number of supported devices with the LifeLock tier instead of the number of people supported in the LifeLock plan. Even if you get the family Norton 360 with LifeLock Select bundle, your VPN and antivirus still support only five devices. We would rather see five devices supported for all individual plans, 10 devices for all two-adult plans, and unlimited devices for family plans.
The Best Current Deal on LifeLock
We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but right now LifeLock doesn’t have any special pricing — just the usual discount for an annual subscription. That discount is steep though. It’s up to 52 percent on some plans, such as the Ultimate Plus two adults plan.
Just because there aren’t deals right now doesn’t mean the company never has deals. When we rounded up last year’s LifeLock Black Friday sales, LifeLock had multiple plans discounted by up to 50 percent. They even left the discount running during LifeLock’s Cyber Monday sale.
Is LifeLock Still a Leader in the Identity Theft Protection Industry?
Yes, LifeLock is a leader in the identity theft protection industry. Its services make up over 15 percent of the entire industry’s revenue 1, but just because a company is big doesn’t mean it stays ahead in terms of technology and service. LifeLock stays ahead in all categories, although the cost reflects it.
In terms of technology, LifeLock offers unique features. Its fictitious identity monitoring tackles one of the latest types of identity theft — synthetic identity theft. It also has a Credit Lock feature that lets you freeze and unfreeze your TransUnion credit file at the click of a button.
FYI: LifeLock offers protections for children with its family plans. The protections aren’t as strong as the adult protections, but they’re still better than most. They give you identity and Social Security number alerts and over $1 million in total identity theft coverage. We rounded up five child identity theft statistics every parent should know so you can better understand the risks.
For service, it’s the only company offering up to $3 million in total identity theft coverage.
About LifeLock
We’ve all heard about LifeLock at this point, whether for good reasons or bad.
About a decade ago, the CEO decided to share his personal information in an ad as a way to show the efficacy of the service. It didn’t work as well as he promised, though, and the company had to pay a fine. He promised it was 100 percent effective when a 100 percent effective identity theft protection service is impossible. LifeLock has since reined in its extravagant advertising methods and hasn’t had any other legal issues. Check out our guide to identity theft protection services for more details on why the services are never 100 percent effective.
LifeLock has been around for almost two decades, so it’s an established name in the industry. It has built up its reputation over the years, so now we know what we can expect: protected data with no reported data breaches, quality identity theft protection services, and up to $3 million in identity theft coverage.
Final Thoughts
When looking at LifeLock as a whole, we think it offers solid value. It provides a top-tier service at a top-tier price. We couldn’t find any other service that offers up to $3 million in coverage, and it monitors a few areas we don’t often see, such as fictitious identities and 401(k) activity.
If you’re on a budget, though, you’ll get more out of a service like Identity Guard. Its plans start at $6.67 per month for individuals or $10 per month for families, which includes five adults and unlimited kids. For comparison, LifeLock’s family plan supports two adults and five kids while starting at $18.49 per month. Both plans provide $1 million in coverage with similar capabilities. Check out our review of Identity Guard to see if the budget option is right for you.
Norton 360 keeps devices like smartphones and laptops virus- and malware-free. It also includes a VPN, ad-blocker, anonymous browsing tool, PC SafeCam, and a cloud backup system for PCs.
All LifeLock plans include $1 million in coverage for attorneys and experts used in identity theft recovery. Each plan also includes coverage for personal expenses and stolen funds related to identity theft. The coverage in here starts at $25,000 each and grows to $1 million with LifeLock’s top
No. LifeLock is designed to keep you aware of potential threats and ring the alarm when fraud takes place. However, you can limit your risk of being an identity theft victim by doing things like using strong passwords and shredding personal documents.
Technically, you don’t need any monitoring at all — but we recommend you have it! Monitoring your credit helps you spot fraud fast. Most of the time, the three major bureaus see the same things. However, it’s possible for financial activity to be reported to just one or two of the three bureaus. So we recommend springing for three-bureau monitoring for extra coverage and peace of mind.
SafeHome.org only uses high-quality sources to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial guidelines to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Max Sheridan brings over two decades of writing experience to our team. He has spent 1,000-plus hours researching VPNs, identity theft protection, and various topics in cyber technology. Previously, Max was an investigative journalist, and he is also a published novelist. He earned a B.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in Classics from the University of Illinois. He currently lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Updated December 23, 2024
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