As Windows 10 begins its final year of official support, Microsoft is executing a familiar game plan for its business customers.
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Last April, in separate posts on the Windows IT Pro Blog and on the Microsoft Education Blog, the company revealed its price list for commercial and education customers who want to continue receiving security updates for Windows 10 after the end-of-support deadline arrives on October 14, 2025. The company has previously confirmed that it plans to offer a version of this program for consumers, but those details still a complete mystery.
Here’s what we know so far.
How much will Windows 10 updates cost?
Business customers will need to pay dearly to stick with Windows 10. A license for the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program is sold as a subscription. For the first year, the cost is $61. For year two, the price doubles, and it doubles again for year three. That Microsoft blog post doesn’t do the math on those, probably because the total is uncomfortably high. A three-year ESU subscription will cost $61 + $122 + $244, for a total of $427 per PC.
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The program closely resembles what Microsoft offered for Windows 7’s end-of-support date in 2020, although the Windows 10 price is 22% higher than the $350 total cost of that program, which started at $50 for year one.
Don’t think you can game the system by jumping into the program after sitting out for a year or two. “ESUs are cumulative,” Microsoft said, and you can’t buy year two unless you’ve already paid for year one.
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Education customers are getting off much easier. The rules are the same, but the price for the first year is $1. It doubles to $2 in the second year and doubles again to $4 in the third and final year, for a grand total of … $7 per PC.
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Administrators who want to get a head start can sign up for the first year of an ESU license as early as October 2024, one year before the actual end-of-support date.
As was the case with Windows 7, Redmond really wants business customers to upgrade to Windows 11, which explains the high price tag. Microsoft’s April announcements talk just as much about what you don’t get with an ESU license as they do about the updates themselves.
Extended Security Updates are not intended to be a long-term solution but rather a temporary bridge. ESUs do not include new features, non-security fixes, or design change requests. The ESU program does not extend technical support for Windows 10. Technical support is limited to the activation of the ESU licenses, installation of ESU monthly updates, and addressing issues that may have been caused due to an update itself.
What discounts are available?
Businesses that use one of Microsoft’s official cloud-based update management services, like Microsoft Intune and Windows AutoPatch, get a discount that takes the first year cost down to $45, but Microsoft doesn’t specify what happens in the second and third years. Those solutions are mainly applicable to very large organizations that pay for Windows Enterprise edition licenses and manage them in the cloud, and it’s worth noting that the option applies only to devices that are owned by an organization; personal (BYOD) devices aren’t eligible.
There’s also an option for businesses that sign up for Windows 365. Subscribers who access a Windows 11 Cloud PC on Windows 365 from a physical device running Windows 10 automatically get an ESU license for their Windows 10 PC. Similar discounts are available for devices running Azure Virtual Desktop.
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Microsoft also says it plans to offer discounts to nonprofit organizations, but details aren’t available on that yet either.
What about consumers and small businesses?
On the page that announced details of the ESU program for commercial customers, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote that details and prices for consumers “will be shared at a later date” on the company’s consumer end-of-support page. Five months later, those details are still missing. “Final pricing and enrollment conditions will be made available closer to the October 2025 date for end of support” is the official word on that page.
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In the meantime, the tens or hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses stuck on Windows 10 – because their hardware isn’t supported on Windows 11 – are still waiting for word on what they’re supposed to do. Microsoft’s recommendation, naturally, is “Buy a new PC.” But asking customers to throw away a perfectly good PC seems like a strange ask from a company that touts its sustainability efforts.
The Windows 7 ESU program was messy. It was not exactly friendly to small businesses and there was no option at all for consumers. The difference, of course, is that those customers had a straightforward option to upgrade to the successor OS, Windows 10. It’s possible that Microsoft will be more prepared this time around. It better be, because a frightfully large number of PCs will need support when October 2025 rolls around.
Note: This post was originally published in April 2024. The most recent update was on September 10, 2024.
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