You can never be sure any software is without malware,
Besides keeping your OS up to date and have AV software on your computer, another thing you can do to check your software for malware is to upload it to
https://www.virustotal.com/ this site checks it with all the AV instead of just one.
But you are never completely safe , there could always be a zero days exploit in software.
And using brand new software is a bigger risk then using software that already has been established.
Another thing you can do is run it on a virtual OS.