A year left to safely use Windows 10 until needing to pay

Microsoft will be allowing consumers to join its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for the first time next year, and it announced the program pricing today in a blog post. The official end-of-service date for Windows 10 is October 14, 2025, but by paying $30 to join the ESU program, you can receive an extra year of security updates. This will allow you to continue safely using Windows 10 until around October 2026, a full two years from now.

By the time support for Windows 10 ends, it will be almost exactly four years since Windows 11 launched and a decade since Windows 10 launched. It takes a lot of work to keep an operating system secure and running smoothly, which is why a company like Microsoft can’t just endlessly support every version of Windows it’s ever shipped. It would end up costing a lot more money than it made — and that’s not how businesses function.

Instead, support for older products ends once the user base is too small to be profitable — and for a company like Microsoft. which has been churning out new operating systems for decades, this “support cycle” has become a very consistent and transparent part of the product.

Sometimes, however, older products stay pretty popular and lots of people continue to use them. In situations like this, initiatives like the ESU program appear, giving people the option to keep the product alive for a little longer.

The fact that it costs money can rub people the wrong way sometimes since they see Windows 10 as a product that they’ve already paid for — but a better way to look at the ESU program is as an optional extra service you can pay for. If you’re not ready to update to Windows 11 or upgrade to a new Windows 11 PC, you can instead buy yourself a bit more time to prepare.