Windows 10 End of Support: Key Takeaways
- The Windows 10 end of support means free security patches stopped, leaving devices vulnerable to new exploits.
- After the Windows 10 end of support, consumers can enroll in the free ESU path by signing in with a Microsoft account and enabling Windows Backup.
- After the Windows 10 end of support, businesses face rising ESU costs that double each year, making large fleets expensive to maintain.
- Devices lacking TPM 2.0 cannot upgrade to Windows 11, so ESU becomes their only security option.
Windows 10 stopped receiving free security updates on October 14, 2025. Nearly a billion PCs, by some estimates, were still running it months after that date, and current usage-share data puts it at roughly one in six Windows devices still on the old operating system as of 2026. If one of those PCs is yours, the actual situation is more nuanced than “unsafe now,” but it does come with a real decision to make, and a real price attached to putting that decision off.
What “End of Support” Means in Practice
Windows 10 didn’t stop working on October 14, 2025, and it won’t stop working now. What ended is Microsoft’s free stream of security patches, the fixes that close newly discovered vulnerabilities as attackers find them. A Windows 10 PC left unpatched past that date is running an operating system whose known and future security holes simply don’t get closed, which is a materially different risk profile than an older-but-still-supported system.
It’s not an immediate failure; it’s a slowly widening gap between what’s known to be exploitable and what’s actually been fixed.
The Free Way to Keep Getting Updates
Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program covers Windows 10 version 22H2 through October 12, 2027 regardless of which enrollment path is used, and there are three ways to enroll, two of which cost nothing. Signing in with a Microsoft Account and turning on Windows Backup (syncing PC settings to OneDrive) qualifies a device for free enrollment with no payment required.
Redeeming 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points is a second free-if-you-have-them option. The third option is a flat one-time payment of $30, assigned to the Microsoft Account used to enroll.
That’s a genuinely low bar for a consumer PC, and it’s worth taking seriously if the alternative is running an unpatched machine simply because the free-enrollment steps weren’t done.
The Business Version Costs Considerably More
For organizations, ESU runs through the Volume Licensing Program at $61 per device for the first year, and the price doubles in each subsequent year of the program’s three-year window. It’s also cumulative: enrolling late still requires paying for the years already skipped, not just the current one. A business with hundreds of Windows 10 machines still in service is looking at a cost that scales fast, which is a meaningfully different calculation than a single consumer PC’s $30 flat fee or free enrollment path.
Why So Many PCs Are Still on Windows 10
Some of this is inertia, but a real, hardware-level reason accounts for a lot of it: Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0, a security chip that a meaningful share of older PCs simply don’t have, and no software update can add. Estimates suggest roughly half of the PCs still running Windows 10 are old enough that they’re not eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 11 at all, regardless of whether the owner wants to move.
For that group, ESU isn’t a stopgap on the way to upgrading, it’s the only way to keep getting security patches on hardware that’s otherwise locked out of Microsoft’s current OS.
What ESU Does and Doesn’t Cover
It’s worth being precise about what the ESU program actually buys, since “extended support” can sound broader than it is. ESU covers critical and important security patches only. It does not include new features, non-security bug fixes, or general technical support from Microsoft, meaning a Windows 10 PC on ESU stays exactly as it was on October 14, 2025 in every respect except its security patch level.
Anyone hoping ESU also means continued feature updates or design changes is thinking of the wrong program; this is specifically a security-only bridge, not a continuation of normal Windows 10 development.
This Isn’t Microsoft’s First ESU Program
Windows 10 isn’t the first time Microsoft has run this playbook. Windows 7 reached its own end of support in January 2020, and Microsoft launched a nearly identical Extended Security Updates program alongside it, business-only at the time, with pricing that doubled every year across its three-year run before the program was retired in January 2023 with no further extension offered. That history matters for two reasons: it shows the year-over-year price doubling isn’t a new or unusual structure specific to Windows 10, and it’s a real signal that Microsoft has, in the past, held firm on an ESU program’s final cutoff date rather than extending it again once announced.
Treating October 12, 2027 as a genuinely final date, based on that precedent, is a more realistic assumption than hoping for another extension when the time comes.
When ESU Makes Sense vs. When a New PC Does
A few honest ways to think through this rather than defaulting to either option automatically:
- If the PC is TPM 2.0-capable and just hasn’t been upgraded yet, the free Windows 11 upgrade is the actual fix, not ESU. ESU buys time; it doesn’t solve the underlying gap the way moving to a currently-supported OS does.
- If the PC fails the TPM 2.0 or other Windows 11 hardware requirement, ESU is a genuinely reasonable one-to-two-year bridge, especially at $30 or free, while a hardware replacement gets planned on a normal timeline rather than an emergency one.
- If the PC is old enough to fail the Windows 11 check and is also showing its age in other ways (slow storage, limited RAM, a battery that no longer holds a charge on a laptop), ESU’s 2027 cutoff is worth treating as a real deadline for a planned replacement rather than a reason to keep deferring one indefinitely.
- For a business still running Windows 10 at scale, the doubling year-over-year ESU cost is worth modeling against the cost of a hardware refresh cycle directly, since the math that favors ESU for a single consumer PC doesn’t automatically hold once per-device fees are multiplied across a fleet and compounding annually.
How to Check Where Your Own PC Stands
A few concrete steps worth running before deciding anything:
- Check your Windows version directly: press the Windows key, type “winver,” and press Enter. If it shows Windows 10, note the build number and confirm it’s on version 22H2, since that’s the specific version ESU enrollment requires; an older build needs a standard Windows Update pass first.
- Check Windows 11 eligibility through the PC Health Check app, a free tool Microsoft provides specifically to answer the TPM 2.0 and other hardware-requirement questions without guesswork. It gives a direct yes-or-no answer rather than requiring a manual spec lookup.
- If eligible for Windows 11, weigh the free upgrade against ESU rather than assuming ESU is the default path. A Windows 11-eligible PC that enrolls in ESU instead of upgrading is choosing a temporary, security-only bridge over a permanent fix that costs the same or less.
- If not eligible, enroll in ESU through the free Windows Backup route first, before considering the $30 or Rewards-points options, since the free path requires nothing more than a Microsoft Account and an existing Windows Update connection.
The Real Deadline Worth Remembering
October 12, 2027 is the actual wall, the date even ESU-covered Windows 10 devices stop receiving security patches under the current program. That’s not an immediate emergency, but it is a fixed point worth planning around rather than discovering later. A PC that’s ESU-eligible today and gets used for another year or two isn’t a security risk in the meantime, provided the enrollment is actually done, but it is a machine on a countdown that a new PC or a Windows 11-eligible upgrade doesn’t share.
The free enrollment path removes the “cost” argument for millions of Windows 10 PCs that could be running unpatched for no better reason than the sync setting was never turned on. That’s worth checking today, regardless of what the longer-term hardware plan ends up being.
*Sources: Microsoft’s own Extended Security Updates program documentation and enrollment requirements, cross-checked against TechRadar’s and PCWorld’s 2026 Windows 10 usage-share reporting.*
Bottom Line
The Windows 10 end of support leaves unpatched PCs exposed to new threats. Run the PC Health Check app, then enroll in the free ESU path via a Microsoft account and Windows Backup.
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Further reading: Microsoft: Windows 10 support.
Photo credit: “Still bare, my office on 8th.” by moriza, licensed BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/44373968@N00/57111960
