AV-Comparatives most recent AV removal test results published.

AV-Comparatives, one of the few independent antivirus (and security suite) testing organizations, have published their recent malware removal test.

18 AV's have been tested for their removal capabilities.
Most of those are paid-for AV's but they have also tested free Avast, Avira, MSE and Panda.
Not one of the free AV's scored the highest in this 8 samples removal test.
To be honest, it's a pretty small sample set, for any statistical relevant score, a sample set of hundreds would be needed.
2 trojans and 1 ransom trojan, 6 worms and one fake AV were used for this test.

Tested was the removal capacity; were all traces of the malware removed or only partially? Like when registry entries still linger, a host file is still compromised or some malware exe files still remain on the computer. In such a case, the tested AV will claim that the malware has been removed but another AV/AM program might still detect an 'infection', even if it isn't really active anymore. Scores could be achieved from A (highest) to D (lowest).
Also, convenience was tested.
Does a user need to take a lot of perhaps difficult steps or is it just 'click and remove'. Here, scores could also be achieved from A to D.
Not one of the free AV's scored the highest score of 3 stars.
Only Avira and MSE scored 2 stars, Avast and Panda scored one star.
Of course, this is only a removal test and based on a very small sample set and imo, detection is much more important.
Check the report yourself, to see which paid AV's scored best; link