--- title: "Seqrite at ₹1,250 vs Kaspersky at ₹5,200: the labs score them level anyway" summary: "What the reseller INR lists, AV-TEST's February 2026 and AV-Comparatives' 2025 business rounds, and both vendors' own data-processing pages say, as of September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/seqrite-vs-kaspersky-endpoint-india format: Analysis desk: "Endpoints & devices" published: 2026-08-11 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["Seqrite","Kaspersky","endpoint protection","EDR","AV-TEST","AV-Comparatives","data residency","CERT-In","pricing India"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/seqrite-vs-kaspersky-endpoint-india.png --- # Seqrite at ₹1,250 vs Kaspersky at ₹5,200: the labs score them level anyway *What the reseller INR lists, AV-TEST's February 2026 and AV-Comparatives' 2025 business rounds, and both vendors' own data-processing pages say, as of September 2026.* Analysis · Endpoints & devices · By TechBag · Published 2026-08-11 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/seqrite-vs-kaspersky-endpoint-india The short version - On Indian reseller lists Seqrite Endpoint Protection Business is **₹1,250** per endpoint a year before GST; Kaspersky’s entry business tier, Next EDR Foundations, converts to about ₹5,200. Neither vendor prints an INR list on its own site.[1][2] - The labs do not see a four-times gap. In AV-TEST’s January to February 2026 business round both products scored 18 of 18. But only Kaspersky appears in AV-Comparatives’ 2025 business tests (99.1% real-world protection, March to April) and in any MITRE round; Seqrite has entered neither.[4][8] - Pick on where the telemetry goes and who will run the console. Seqrite’s console can stay in India; Kaspersky processes Indian users’ threat data in Zurich, and has been barred from new US sales since 20 July 2024 while remaining legal, and growing, in India.[13][15] An earlier version of this piece compared Seqrite and Kaspersky on feature ticks and concluded, as every vendor comparison does, that the cheaper one suits small companies and the dearer one suits enterprises. That is not a finding; it is a price list read aloud. The question an Indian IT head is actually trying to settle is narrower: for a 200- to 2,000-endpoint estate that must keep CERT-In happy, hold personal data under the DPDP Act and get through a procurement committee, does the fourfold price difference buy anything the committee would recognise? We went looking for the published prices, the test results for the specific products tested, and each vendor’s own statement of where the data goes. Here is what they say. ## The INR gap is real: ₹1,250 against roughly ₹5,200 per endpoint a year Start with what a buyer can actually see. Seqrite’s own product page lists its editions with the word “Enquire” where a price would be, and Kaspersky India’s Next page offers a purchase form rather than a figure.[20][21] The INR that exists in public is reseller INR. Techjockey lists Seqrite Endpoint Protection SME at ₹950 and Business at ₹1,250 per user for one year, with the 5 to 50 and 51 to 100 user bands, and Enterprise Suite at ₹2,550.[1] TechBag’s endpoint guide records the partner list for the Core tier at ₹799.[2] Kaspersky’s comparable rung is Next EDR Foundations, the prevention tier with root-cause analysis that replaced Endpoint Security for Business Select. The published price is a euro one, €287.50 for five users a year, which the guide converts to about ₹26,000, or ₹5,200 a user.[2] The cloud-only SMB product, Endpoint Security Cloud Select, is listed at US$4.17 a device a month, about ₹4,260 a year.[3] Indian partners quote below these in volume, but a quote is not a list, and a committee compares lists. **Figure: Seqrite's business tier lists at under a quarter of Kaspersky's entry tier, before any partner discount** *INR list price per endpoint per year, before 18% GST, reseller and converted vendor lists, September 2026* Seqrite EPS Core India partner list ₹799 Seqrite EPS SME reseller list, 1 year ₹950 Seqrite EPS Business reseller list, 1 year ₹1,250 Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Select US$4.17 a device a month, converted ₹4,260 Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations €287.50 per 5 users, converted ₹5,200 | | Value (₹) | | --- | --- | | Seqrite EPS Core | 799 | | Seqrite EPS SME | 950 | | Seqrite EPS Business | 1,250 | | Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Select | 4,260 | | Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations | 5,200 | Source: Techjockey Seqrite EPS listing; TechBag endpoint-protection guide (Seqrite Core, Kaspersky Next Foundations at €287.50 per 5 users); TechBag Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud page · as of September 2026 · Kaspersky figures are euro and dollar lists converted at the guide's rates; Indian partner quotes run lower for both vendors TechBag countHow TechBag read the tiers We matched Seqrite Business (device control, patch management, web filtering on top of the antivirus core) against Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations (the same prevention set plus root-cause analysis) because both are the first rung each vendor sells to a business rather than a shop. Seqrite’s EDR is a separate add-on, reported at about ₹350 more per endpoint; Kaspersky’s EDR Optimum and Expert are quote-only. The chart compares the rungs that are priced, not the rungs that are not.[2] ## The labs score them level, but only one of them turns up everywhere AV-TEST’s business Windows 11 round for January and February 2026 tested 15 products. Kaspersky Endpoint Security 12.11 and Seqrite Endpoint Security 18.00 both scored 6 of 6 for protection, performance and usability, both were named Top Product, and so were twelve others; only Symantec fell short.[4] The June 2025 Windows 10 round tells the same story: Kaspersky Endpoint Security 12.9 and Seqrite 18.00 at 18 of 18 among 19 products.[5] For the 2025 year AV-TEST gave Seqrite Endpoint Protection its Best Performance award for corporate users, and gave Kaspersky Endpoint Security Best Usability and Best Advanced Protection.[6][7] Read those awards as what they are. Seqrite’s is for system load: its agent slowed office PCs less than the industry average in every 2025 performance test. Kaspersky’s advanced-protection award comes from the ATP series, ten live ransomware and infostealer scenarios, where it was error-free across the year.[7] AV-TEST’s standard protection test is now so widely passed that it separates nobody; the ATP series and the other labs are where differences show. **Figure: Level at AV-TEST, absent elsewhere: Seqrite has no AV-Comparatives or MITRE result to set beside Kaspersky's** *Independent test results for the products as tested, June 2025 to February 2026* 18 / 18 Seqrite Endpoint Security 18.00, AV-TEST business Windows 11, January to February 2026 AV-TEST 18 / 18 Kaspersky Endpoint Security 12.11, the same AV-TEST round AV-TEST 99.1% Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Select, AV-Comparatives Real-World Protection, March to April 2025, one false positive AV-Comparatives 0 Seqrite entries in AV-Comparatives' two 2025 business tests (17 vendors each) and in any MITRE Enterprise round TechBag count Source: AV-TEST business Windows reports, June 2025 and February 2026; AV-Comparatives Business Security Test factsheet March–April 2025 and August–November 2025 report; MITRE Enterprise 2025 participant list · as of September 2026 That is where the comparison stops being level. AV-Comparatives ran two business tests in 2025, March to June and August to November, with 17 vendors in each; Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Select scored 99.1% real-world protection with one false positive and 100% in the malware protection test in the first factsheet, and took the Approved Business Security Product award in both runs.[8][9][10] Seqrite is in neither list. At MITRE, Kaspersky EDR and its managed service were evaluated in Round 2, published April 2020, and the company has not entered since; the 2025 Enterprise round had eleven vendors and Kaspersky was not one of them.[11][12] Seqrite has never entered a MITRE round. Our view Our view: Seqrite’s prevention engine is as good as its AV-TEST scores say, and its performance award is the kind of result an Indian estate on five-year-old laptops should care about. But a vendor that submits to one lab and declines the others has chosen what you are allowed to see. For the EDR tiers in particular, where no Seqrite result exists at all, you are buying on the datasheet. ## Where the telemetry goes: Pune or Zurich, and what the US ban does and does not mean in India “Next-gen” endpoint protection is a cloud product wearing an agent. The agent on the laptop blocks what it already knows; for everything else it sends hashes, URLs and sometimes whole suspicious files to the vendor’s reputation cloud and waits for a verdict. That step is not optional, and it is where the residency question lives. Kaspersky’s own transparency page states that threat-related data from users in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and eighteen Asia-Pacific countries, India among them, is processed and stored in Switzerland, with malicious and suspicious files in a Zurich data centre; the move for the Asia-Pacific group dates from November 2020. The page lists thirteen Transparency Centers and records that the Woburn, US centre closed in July 2024.[13] Seqrite’s product page says nothing about hosting; TechBag’s guide records its cloud console as India-hosted and its on-premises console as the default, from a vendor-document check in August 2026.[2] **Figure: Four steps, one residency decision: the reputation lookup is the step you cannot keep on-premises** *How a next-gen endpoint product handles an unknown file, and where each vendor processes it* 1. 01On the endpointThe agent blocks known malware and watches behaviour. Both products score 6 of 6 here; this is the part the labs test. 2. 02The consoleSeqrite: an on-premises server or its cloud console. Kaspersky: Security Center on-premises or the Kaspersky cloud console. Your choice at purchase, and the easy half of residency. 3. 03The reputation cloudUnknown hashes, URLs and suspicious files go to the vendor. Seqrite’s cloud is Quick Heal’s own; Kaspersky processes Indian users’ data in Zurich. Not switchable off without losing the point. 4. 04ResponseKaspersky’s Remediation Engine rolls back the actions it recorded. Seqrite restores encrypted files from its own backup. Two different promises to the board. Source: Kaspersky Transparency Center page; TechBag endpoint-protection guide; AV-TEST and vendor product documentation · as of September 2026 Now the ban, stated precisely. On 20 June 2024 the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued a Final Determination prohibiting Kaspersky Lab and its affiliates from providing anti-virus and cybersecurity software to US persons; it was published in the Federal Register on 24 June 2024.[14] New US agreements were barred from 20 July 2024, and from 29 September 2024 Kaspersky could no longer provide signature or code updates in the United States or license its software for resale there.[15] Kaspersky denies wrongdoing. None of this has legal force in India, where the company reports that 2025 B2B sales grew 31%, Kaspersky Next sales more than fivefold and industrial cybersecurity 648%, figures from its own June 2026 release and not independently audited.[16] **Figure: Barred in the US since July 2024, still sold and growing in India** *Kaspersky dates a procurement committee will ask about, April 2020 to June 2026* | Date | Event | Detail | | --- | --- | --- | | Apr 2020 | Last MITRE round entered | | | Nov 2020 | Indian threat data moves to Zurich | | | Jun 2024 | US Final Determination | | | Jul 2024 | New US sales barred | | | Sept 2024 | US updates end | | | Jun 2026 | India B2B sales +31% (company figure) | | Source: Sources 11 and 13 to 16 · as of September 2026 ReportedTwo facts buyers get backwards Kaspersky is prohibited in the United States and sold in India; that is the whole of it, and an Indian company with US customers, US-government contracts or a supply-chain clause that cites US restricted parties should read its own contracts before buying.[14] And Seqrite is not “CERT-In certified”. CERT-In empanels security-auditing firms, not products; its empanelled list, 233 organisations as of 25 September 2026, contains neither Quick Heal nor Seqrite, and no antivirus product of any vendor is on it.[18] ## When each fits, honestly Strip out the brochure language and the decision has three inputs: whether the console and the reputation lookups must stay in India, whether anyone will operate an EDR, and whether the company has US exposure. Price is the fourth, and it is the one input where the answer is already known. **Figure: Residency and price send you to Seqrite; detection depth, rollback and test evidence send you to Kaspersky** *Fit by buyer situation, from the published prices, test records and vendor statements, September 2026* Where Kaspersky drops out: buy Seqrite - Regulated or government-adjacent estate that wants the console on-premises or in an Indian data centre, and wants it in writing - Prevention is the job; nobody will triage EDR alerts, so an INR-list prevention tier at ₹950 to ₹1,250 is the honest buy - Old hardware: Seqrite's 2025 AV-TEST performance award is for low system load on office PCs - Supply-chain or customer clauses that cite US restricted parties, where a Russia-headquartered vendor costs a conversation you do not want Where Kaspersky earns its price - You want ransomware rollback, not restore-from-backup: the Remediation Engine is documented; Seqrite's recovery is a restore - You will run EDR, or buy Kaspersky's MDR, and want a ladder from Foundations to XDR Expert on one agent - You want independent evidence beyond AV-TEST: AV-Comparatives Approved in both 2025 runs, EPR and enterprise ATP certified - You run OT or a plant floor and want the same vendor's industrial line, the segment Kaspersky says grew fastest in India Source: Sections 1 to 3 of this piece; TechBag endpoint-protection guide · as of September 2026 Our earlier version said Seqrite for SMBs and Kaspersky for enterprises. The published record says something more useful: Seqrite is the right buy wherever prevention is the job and India is the boundary, at any size; Kaspersky is the right buy wherever detection and response is the job and the company has no US exposure. A 1,500-endpoint Indian manufacturer with no US customers and a two-person IT team is a Seqrite account. A 300-endpoint fintech with a SOC retainer and a US client is, uncomfortably, neither; it should be reading the[endpoint guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/endpoint-protection) for the vendors that document a Mumbai region. If you are buying this in India Both vendors invoice in India with 18% GST on the licence, so the Seqrite Business list of ₹1,250 lands at ₹1,475 per endpoint and the converted Kaspersky Foundations figure of ₹5,200 at about ₹6,136; a 500-endpoint estate is roughly ₹7.4 lakh against ₹30.7 lakh a year before negotiation.[1][2] Kaspersky’s Indian prices are partner quotes against a euro list, so ask for the year-two renewal figure in INR before comparing; Seqrite’s INR list is the list. The regulation that bites is the same for both. CERT-In’s Directions of 28 April 2022, in force sixty days later, require every service provider, intermediary, data centre and body corporate to keep ICT system logs for a rolling 180 days within Indian jurisdiction and to report listed incidents, ransomware and data breaches among them, within six hours.[17] An endpoint console is one of those log sources; if it runs in a vendor cloud, the 180 days and the jurisdiction are the vendor’s to prove and yours to put in the contract. The DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025 and bring the security-safeguard and breach-intimation duties into force on 13 May 2027, with the Act’s schedule setting penalties of up to ₹250 crore for failing reasonable safeguards.[19] Neither vendor’s India origin or Swiss processing satisfies that on its own; the safeguards duty is about what you configured, not where the vendor is headquartered. TechBag resells both vendors and quotes both in INR with GST. How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 Prices are the figures visible to an Indian buyer in September 2026: Techjockey’s Seqrite Endpoint Protection listing (per user, one year, GST not stated and treated as excluded), TechBag’s endpoint-protection guide for the Seqrite Core partner list and the Kaspersky Next Foundations euro list with the guide’s INR conversion, and TechBag’s Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud page for the US-dollar Select figure. Neither seqrite.com nor kaspersky.co.in printed an INR price when checked. Test results are for the exact product and version each lab names; AV-TEST rounds are the business Windows 10 June 2025 and Windows 11 February 2026 reports; AV-Comparatives figures are from the March to April 2025 factsheet, and the second-run award from the lab’s own 2025 awards page. The MITRE statement rests on the published participant lists; the absence of Seqrite from AV-Comparatives and MITRE is a TechBag count of those lists, not a statement about why. Kaspersky’s India growth figures are the company’s own release and are labelled as such. Residency statements are from Kaspersky’s transparency page and, for Seqrite, from TechBag’s vendor-document check of August 2026, because Seqrite’s product page is silent. Excluded: partner quotes, SE Labs (no 2025 business report fetched), and the EDR and XDR tiers of either vendor, which are quote-only. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Techjockey, Seqrite EPS for Business listing (SME ₹950, Business ₹1,250, Enterprise Suite ₹2,550, one year)](https://www.techjockey.com/detail/seqrite-eps-for-business) — undated page Reseller list; GST not stated. 2. [TechBag, Endpoint Protection guide: Seqrite Core ₹799 partner list, Kaspersky Next Foundations €287.50 per 5 users ≈ ₹26,000, residency tags](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/endpoint-protection) — capability check 22 August 2026 3. [TechBag, Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud page (Select from US$4.17 a device a month, ≈ ₹355)](https://www.thetechbag.com/kaspersky/kaspersky-endpoint-security-cloud) — mid-2026 INR indicative. 4. [AV-TEST, The best Windows antivirus software for business users, Windows 11, February 2026 (15 products)](https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/business-windows-client/windows-11/february-2026/) — tested January to February 2026 5. [AV-TEST, business Windows 10 report, June 2025 (19 products)](https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/business-windows-client/windows-10/june-2025/) — June 2025 6. [AV-TEST, AV-TEST Award 2025 for Seqrite (Best Performance, corporate users)](https://www.av-test.org/en/news/av-test-award-2025-for-seqrite/) — 12 March 2026 7. [AV-TEST, AV-TEST Awards 2025 for Kaspersky (Best Usability and Best Advanced Protection, corporate users)](https://www.av-test.org/en/news/av-test-awards-2025-for-kaspersky/) — 12 March 2026 8. [AV-Comparatives, Business Security Test March–April 2025 factsheet (Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Select 12.7 / 12.8: 99.1% real-world, 1 FP, 100% malware protection)](https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/business-security-test-march-april-2025-factsheet/) — 15 May 2025 9. [AV-Comparatives, Business Security Test August–November 2025 (17 vendors)](https://av-comparatives.org/business-security-test-august-november-2025/) — 15 December 2025 10. [AV-Comparatives, Awards 2025 for Kaspersky (Approved Business Security Product in both runs; EPR and enterprise ATP certified)](https://av-comparatives.org/av-comparatives-awards-2025-for-kaspersky/) — 3 March 2026 11. [Kaspersky, press release: Kaspersky EDR and Managed Protection in MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation Round 2](https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/kaspersky-enterprise-solutions-quality-proven) — 22 April 2020 12. [MITRE, news release on the 2025 ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluations (eleven participating vendors)](https://www.mitre.org/news-insights/news-release/mitre-attck-evaluations-advance-cloud-security-and-counter-espionage) — 10 December 2025 Participant list confirmed via SecurityWeek's report of the release. 13. [Kaspersky, Transparency Center: data processing in Switzerland, the Asia-Pacific country footnote (India listed), thirteen centres, Woburn closure July 2024](https://www.kaspersky.com/transparency-center) — page updated September 2026 14. [US Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce Department Prohibits Russian Kaspersky Software for U.S. Customers; Federal Register 89 FR 52434](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/06/24/2024-13532/final-determination-case-no-icts-2021-002-kaspersky-lab-inc) — 20 June 2024; published 24 June 2024 15. [US Bureau of Industry and Security, Kaspersky Lab, Inc. Prohibition (effective dates 20 July 2024 and 29 September 2024)](https://www.bis.gov/kaspersky) — 2024 16. [Kaspersky India 2025 results, via CXOToday (B2B +31%, Next more than fivefold, KICS +648%)](https://cxotoday.com/media-coverage/kaspersky-india-records-strong-2025-growth-with-b2b-sales-growing-31/) — 12 June 2026 Company release, not independently audited. 17. [CERT-In, Directions under section 70B(6) of the IT Act, 2000 (180-day logs within Indian jurisdiction; six-hour reporting)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/PDF/CERT-In_Directions_70B_28.04.2022.pdf) — 28 April 2022; effective after 60 days 18. [CERT-In, Empanelled Information Security Auditing Organisations (233 organisations; no Quick Heal or Seqrite entry)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/PDF/Empanel_org.pdf) — checked 25 September 2026 19. [DPDP Rules 2025, commencement timeline (notified 13 November 2025; safeguard and breach duties from 13 May 2027)](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — 13 November 2025 20. [Seqrite, Endpoint Protection product page (editions priced 'Enquire')](https://www.seqrite.com/seqrite-endpoint-protection) — undated page 21. [Kaspersky India, Kaspersky Next page (EDR Foundations and Optimum sold via form; XDR Expert via contact)](https://www.kaspersky.co.in/next) — undated page Related on TechBag: the [endpoint protection guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/endpoint-protection) compares 36 products by SKU; the [Seqrite hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/seqrite) and the [Kaspersky hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/kaspersky) carry each vendor’s full line and pricing notes. **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [Endpoint protection guide: 36 products by SKU](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/endpoint-protection) — rollback mechanisms, India hosting, USD and INR tiers - [Seqrite vendor hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/seqrite) — Endpoint Protection tiers, EDR, XDR and the DPDP line - [Kaspersky vendor hub](https://www.thetechbag.com/kaspersky) — Next EDR/XDR, KICS, MDR and the US-restriction context