Windows 10 Security Updates to Cost $61 After 2025, $427 by 2028

[btarunr]

Microsoft Windows 10 is an operating system quite a few people don't want to upgrade from, and some don't even consider the move to Windows 11 an upgrade. This is especially true for businesses or other organizations that aren't sold on Windows 11. Microsoft already has a retirement plan in place, which sees the company discontinue regular security updates for the operating system on October 14, 2025, but you can keep getting these updates beyond that date, for a price.

Under the Extended Security Updates (ESU) plan for Windows 10, you can purchase a year's worth regular "patch Tuesday" security updates at $61, and keep Windows 10 alive till October 2026. Here's where it gets crazy—the price of ESU doubles each year. The October 2026 to October 2027 leg will cost you $122. This doubles again the following year, with the final October 2027 to October 2028 leg costing $244. If you plan on keeping your Windows 10 through till 2028, it will cost you a total of $427 for the three years, per machine. ESU licenses resemble the OS's main license—you either buy them electronically through the Microsoft Store or Windows 365; or as 25-digit codes in retail.



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[Onasi]

“Microsoft Windows 10 is an operating system quite a few people want to upgrade from, and some don't even consider the move to Windows 11 an upgrade.”

Was this supposed to be “quite a few people don’t want to upgrade from”?

Anyway, this is a fairly standard MS procedure. All moaning aside, all who are interested in continuing to use Windows will eventually go to 11 (or 12, when that inevitably hits). Paying to stay on 10 is something only some enterprise customers will choose for mission critical PCs.

 

[GerKNG]

i mean you can turn windows 11 into windows XP when it comes to privacy and data collection. i need three tools and over 150 registry changes but at least it does not connect to the internet outside of updates.

 

[LazyGamer]

So I'll have to switch to Win 11 just to avoid paying for security updates. Does Win 11 have any kind of advantages over 10 for someone using it exclusively for media and gaming?

 

[Solaris17]

I don’t see the issue. ESU has existed for a long time and this is cheaper than it’s ever been iirc.

 

[Onasi]

So I'll have to switch to Win 11 just to avoid paying for security updates. Does Win 11 have any kind of advantages over 10 for someone using it exclusively for media and gaming?

I mean, somewhat. VRR and MPO work better than ever for once, if that’s something that floats your boat. Auto HDR is also a thing, as is overall better HDR support. Less issues with high polling mice after a recent update, not sure if that was backported to 10. There are these small little things that add up, I’d say.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Does Win 11 have any kind of advantages over 10 for someone using it exclusively for media and gaming?

Also keep in mind W11 has a greater risk of misbehaving on some machines for no apparent reason. My "DLSS" rig is one of examples: everything seems to be 100% compatible but I still have crashes in games that run 100% smoothly on W10. Never happened on an almost identical rig of my homie. You never know with the software, businesses gave up on releasing something that's not broken ages ago.

 

[Quitessa]

Uh-huh, and what about those computers that Can't upgrade from 10 to 11 due to arbitrary M$ limitations?

 

[Wirko]

It doesn't take a lot of clairvoyance to see the most probable future ...

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I use 11 pro but really it takes quite a bit to get it into usable state for myself anyway
I got it down to two utility to do one thing each really and that is explorer patcher to show all apps instead of the silly ass default start menu bs

I did add another utility recently to kill windows update service from turning back on seems to work pretty well so far
Windows Update Blocker v1.8

Other than those two and boat load of reg files from Brink on 11forum and W1zzard hehe I can use the 11 bloated pos MS says is so good lol
10 needed less work for sure.

 

[maxfly]

Everybody (MS) has a plan until they get punched in the face. My prediction, win10 will hang around (cost free), for several more years due to a couple hundred million unprotected machines getting infected after MS deadline. Their statement will resemble an oops we're sorry we force fed all you fine folks win10. Then again tried to force feed you win11 before so many could afford a new win11 machine. Here, have win10 for a 2,3,4,5 more years fully updated...

 

[Eternit]

They could have made more money by selling upgrade protection. You pay them the ransom and they don't force updates on you. Also for 11 they can earn a lot of money by ransom for getting proper taskbar, non Microsoft account and soon an option to opt out from copilot. But probably the most hey can profit would be the latest drivers and DirectX for Windows 7.

 

[maxli86]

The thing is that starting next year older PC hardware like Intel 6th/7th/Skylake CPU can't install Windows 11.
So not if as if it a choice, unless the PC supports Windows 11 than I see why not upgrade to it.
Recent Windows 11 have a lot of improvement as compare with previous releases.

I am using Intel 9th CPU and have move from Windows 10 to 11 23H2.

 

[Easo]

Queue outrage again about what has always been Microsoft's policy. Never change internet, never change.

Windows 10 will be 10 (kek) years old in next year, as far as I am concerned 10 (kill me) years of support is pretty good.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Uh-huh, and what about those computers that Can't upgrade from 10 to 11 due to arbitrary M$ limitations?

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Although, we all knew this was coming.

The thing is that starting next year older PC hardware like Intel 6th/7th/Skylake CPU can't install Windows 11.
So not if as if it a choice, unless the PC supports Windows 11 than I see why not upgrade to it.
Recent Windows 11 have a lot of improvement as compare with previous releases.

I am using Intel 9th CPU and have move from Windows 10 to 11 23H2.

7th Gen (Kaby Lake) should be supported by Windows 11 as long as you have a TPM. Bought my mom a i7-7500U laptop back then and it is fully supported.

 

[SirB]

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great. 11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

 

[Hattu]

I think none of my current computers are "win11-ready", all but 3 of them run Linux already. My old main rig (win10) is still broken and I have two old MBPros.

Looks like I'm full Linux user in a few years. This new AI-thingy requirement doesn't feel good either. And I have always bought my windows licences.

 

[windwhirl]

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great.

Same

11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

But I don't need to insult anyone over their choices.

Queue outrage again about what has always been Microsoft's policy. Never change internet, never change.

Windows 10 will be 10 (kek) years old in next year, as far as I am concerned 10 (kill me) years of support is pretty good.

Pretty much, yeah.

And the 10 years of support has an asterisk, because LTSC branches are gonna keep receiving support until 2027/2029/2032, depending on your specific variant of LTSC

 

[FierceRed]

7th Gen (Kaby Lake) should be supported by Windows 11 as long as you have a TPM. Bought my mom a i7-7500U laptop back then and it is fully supported.

The TPM is the sticking point especially at that generational level. Very easy to have a Sky/Kaby Lake and not have a TPM.

I built the PC in my profile specs in July 2016 using a ROG motherboard released late 2015, and don't have a TPM. "Just upgrade bro" is destroyed when that's a moderate timeframe for PC ownership, especially given that 2000-series GPUs still dominate Steam hardware surveys.

I intend to upgrade to AM5 this summer, but with the recent earthquake I wouldn't be surprised if retailers surge-price the parts out of my range for lulz.

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great. 11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

I think you're misconstruing people annoyed by the requirements to use 11 as opposed to 11 itself.

Anyone saying Sky/Kaby Lake are perfectly functioning hardware that should have happily hummed along for a decade as people's daily driver have a valid point - especially considering how Intel stagnated and sold 4 core CPUs for far too long. Intel wasn't exactly innovating before Ryzen came along.

I am not one of those people. I am a person that says the economy hasn't been doing people great favors over the last 7 years, and outside of PC enthusiast forums where upgrading is the norm, regular people with thin wallets not having a TPM does not surprise me.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great. 11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

The fact that you don't have issues does not mean that others don't.

 

[MacZ]

We make updates mandatory, because we cannot have so many machines running without adequate protection.

And now, we just let hundreds of millions of machines go unprotected.

Sure, MS, sure.

 

[Eternit]

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great. 11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

Well you like it and that's fine. But a lot of people don't. I've moved from XP to Vista rather quickly but I had a new gaming PC. It was working almost OK, and after the first SP it was all good. But there were a lot of people with Vista ready PC, that weren't actually ready. Having Vista on them was a terrible experience. 7 wasn't a lot better than Vista, but by the time most of the users had multi core 64bt CPUs with 4GB of RAM and DirectX 9c GPU. It is totally different with changes sience Windows 8 and even worse since Windows 10, when the OS is in the constant beta version state and users are unpaid testers. Some might like it, there was a time I liked it, but it is annoying when they forcing updates that remove software you are using, sometimes even delete your files, then force you to share our data and use their services non existing when you decided to buy an licence.

 

[Vayra86]

Everybody (MS) has a plan until they get punched in the face. My prediction, win10 will hang around (cost free), for several more years due to a couple hundred million unprotected machines getting infected after MS deadline. Their statement will resemble an oops we're sorry we force fed all you fine folks win10. Then again tried to force feed you win11 before so many could afford a new win11 machine. Here, have win10 for a 2,3,4,5 more years fully updated...

Nah they're gonna offer a Win11 path instead, I reckon in that case.

 

[Easo]

Pretty much, yeah.

And the 10 years of support has an asterisk, because LTSC branches are gonna keep receiving support until 2027/2029/2032, depending on your specific variant of LTSC

Well, LTSC is for those who REALLY need it and have specific enough use cases (manufacturing, medicine, etc.), not the home users (where the outrage is from...) who will likely have moved on by then or will move on to a more modern PC soon after, but yeah.

 

[Frick]

Been on 11 from prerelease days. Works great. 11 haters are kind of slow people it seems. Reminds me of XP luddites from the past. Probably the same people bitching about 11 now.

I am neutral to Windows 11 (not using it), but what is really annoying is what they are doing with the frankly silly "official" requirements. A computer from 2012 is still plenty powerful for everyday use (browsing, office stuff, light games), but not for Windows 11. I get that at some point you might want to cut off support, but then you get stuff like this where they added support for their own systems. You can install it anyway, but how many people out of all Windows users does manual installations? Not many. Meaning people running operating systems that don't get updates or people upgrading when they really don't have to.

(and people liked XP more mostly because Vista was such a hardware hog in comparision, "what do you mean 512MB RAM is not enough, what BS is this?" and that OEMs sold woefully underpowered systems to the point of making the Vista badge a curse, plus Old Stable is usually preferable to New Stable-Ish which makes sense and Windows 7 was announced not long after Vista was announced so Vista was never all that necessery)