Consumers won’t be offered all three years of extended Windows 10 security updates

Most Windows 10 PCs will stop getting new security updates in October 2025, less than a year from today. For businesses and schools, the company is offering up to three years of extended security updates, with prices that increase steadily year by year to incentivize switching to Windows 11.

But Microsoft announced today that end users would only be able to buy a single year of extended security updates for their Windows 10 PCs at the price of $30 per PC. The company confirmed to us that the second and third years of security updates would be exclusive to businesses and schools.

Microsoft says consumers will be able to enroll in the Windows 10 Extended Security Update (ESU) program "closer to the end of support in 2025."

For users with older but functional PCs that they aren't ready to part with yet, $30 is certainly less than it would cost to buy a new computer, and it's around half of the $61 that Microsoft is charging businesses for each of their PCs that they want to keep using with Windows 10. But it means that people hoping to cling to Windows 10 on their home PCs until 2028 will have to figure something else out.