Windows 10 officially reached end of support on October 14, 2025. If your business is still running it, you probably know that already, and you probably did what a lot of businesses did: bought yourself a year of breathing room through Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.
That year is almost up. The first year of ESU coverage runs out in mid-October 2026, and this is the moment the program was designed to get expensive. Here is what is changing, what it costs, and how to make a smart decision instead of a rushed one.
A Quick Refresher on ESU
ESU is Microsoft’s paid safety net for businesses that could not move off Windows 10 in time. It delivers critical and important security patches only. No new features, no bug fixes beyond security, no general support. It is a bridge, not a destination, and Microsoft priced it to make sure you feel that.
The Math Microsoft Wants You to Notice
For business customers, ESU pricing doubles every year:
- Year 1 (through October 2026): $61 per device
- Year 2 (through October 2027): $122 per device
- Year 3 (through October 2028): $244 per device
Run the numbers on a 20-computer office. Year 2 alone is $2,440. Ride the program all three years and you have spent roughly $427 per device, more than $8,500 across the office, to keep aging machines exactly where they are. No faster, no new capability, just patched.
That is the point. Microsoft is not really selling you updates. They are charging you rent on a decision you have not made yet.
One prerequisite worth checking today: ESU only covers devices on Windows 10 version 22H2. If any machines sit on older versions, they are not even eligible for the paid updates.
The $30 Consumer Option Is Not Your Answer
You may have seen that home users can get ESU cheaply, currently a one-time $30 purchase, free with settings sync, or even redeemed with Microsoft Rewards points, with the consumer program running until October 2027. Tempting to put the whole office on that plan.
Do not. The consumer program is designed for personal machines, not business fleets. Running your company on a consumer safety net leaves you with unmanaged devices, licensing questions, and a plan that still has its own expiration date. For a business, it trades a real problem for a hidden one.
What Staying Behind Actually Costs
The ESU invoice is the visible cost. The quiet costs grow every month:
- Software vendors move on. App makers test against Windows 11 first. Expect more “unsupported OS” answers when something breaks.
- Compliance and insurance questions get harder. As we covered in Why Cybersecurity Is No Longer Optional for Mid-Sized Businesses, running an out-of-support operating system is exactly the kind of finding that shows up in audits and insurance questionnaires.
- The attack surface ages. Security-only patching still leaves you on a platform attackers know inside and out, with defenses designed a decade ago.
Your Real Options, Ranked
1. Upgrade eligible PCs to Windows 11. Free, and for machines that meet the hardware requirements it is mostly a scheduling exercise. Check eligibility first; many 2019-and-newer machines qualify.
2. Replace the machines that cannot make the jump. Older hardware that fails Windows 11’s requirements was likely approaching replacement anyway. Planned over a quarter, this is a budget line. Done in a panic next October, it is a fire drill with shipping delays.
3. Use ESU Year 2 as a bridge for stragglers only. $122 per device is defensible for a handful of machines tied to specialty software or equipment that needs migration time. It is not defensible as a whole-office strategy at double last year’s price, doubling again next year.
4. Special cases. If workloads already run as Windows 10 virtual machines in certain Microsoft cloud environments, ESU can be included at no extra cost. Worth checking before writing any checks.
Your Next 60 Days
- Inventory. Every Windows 10 machine, with age, version (confirm 22H2), and what it is used for
- Sort. Upgrade-eligible, replace, or bridge-on-ESU
- Schedule. Phased upgrades before October, so nobody loses a workday
- Budget. Compare the 3-year ESU rent against replacement costs. The rent usually loses
The Bottom Line
October 2026 is not the day Windows 10 stops working. It is the day continuing to avoid the decision doubles in price. The businesses that come out of this cleanly are the ones treating it as a 60-day project, not a next-year problem.
Not sure which of your machines can make the jump to Windows 11? We can inventory your fleet and map the cheapest clean exit from Windows 10. Contact us today.
Sources:
Comments are closed