Third-party antivirus alongside Windows defender

Noob question, I'm sure it has been asked and answered a million times, but can I run a third party security software while leaving defender active? I had Eset for years with Malwarebytes as backup manual scanner, now with Win10 I'm considering leaving the paid antivirus market and go Windows defender, but it still makes me nervous to rely on one free solution and I'd like to have a fully featured free backup like Avast or Avira in parallel.
X-test 4ever :)
Thanks :)

I use offline scans by AdwCleaner & Malwarebytes to augment Defender

Hi there
These days for HOME machines using latest builds of W10 - especially the newer 19H1 and 20H1 releases (both still 1903) any AV other than WD imo is a big WOT (Waste of time) as usually the updates to these programs are way behind Windows updates and releases.

As in all these cases YMMV.

I've often used places like TPB etc and can say I never have had any problems whatsoever with viruses etc and just use WD on Windows 10 (all releases since the start). These 3rd party programs were necessary on W7 / W8 as the old WD was just a malware scanner and not very effective -- now it's an integral part of Windows security internals and external threats are radically different from a few years ago -- virus infecting and hacking mom and pop machines isn't "Hip" or "In" any more -- It's scams and money making "Fast Buck" things. Hacking and infecting computers isn't a major threat for individual machines -- that's out with the "Ark" -- a bit like those old 1960-'s 1970's "Phone Phreaks" who used to play around with telephone systems --long before mobile phones were even thought of.

Large Networking systems, national infrastructure, large businesses etc --different ballgame totally but indididual machines --again WD is more than sufficient even for relatively "rogue" users.

Cheers
jimbo