Support for Windows 10 ended on 14 October 2025. Companies that chose to keep their PCs on that system, rather than upgrading or replacing them, have only one way to keep receiving security updates: the paid ESU programme, Extended Security Updates. And a date is about to fall on that programme that is worth looking at now, not in November. If you run or invest in an operation based in Italy, it is the back-office PCs of that business we are talking about.
The doubling mechanism
Microsoft’s official documentation is explicit about how the price works. ESU for organisations costs around 61 US dollars per device for the first year, which started in November 2025. And here is the point: the price doubles every consecutive year, up to a maximum of three years.
In figures, for a single PC (the euro value is approximate, because Microsoft lists in dollars and the effective price depends on the reseller):
- Year 1 (from Nov 2025): ~$61, about €55
- Year 2 (from Nov 2026): ~$122, about €110
- Year 3 (from Nov 2027): ~$244, about €220
Year 2 begins in about three and a half months. Those who bought the first year’s cover now face the choice of renewing at double the price, and those who haven’t bought it yet have an extra problem, which we’ll get to shortly.
There’s a trap in buying late
A detail of the rules that surprises many: ESU is cumulative. Microsoft states it in plain terms: if you decide to buy the programme in the second year, you must also pay for the first, because the cover cannot be split.
That means you can’t wait for November 2026 expecting to pay only for the current year. Whoever enters year 2 pays year 1 plus year 2, roughly $183 per device, around €165. Across a fleet of thirty PCs that is more than $5,000, about €4,900, to keep using an operating system that has reached end of life.
The “free in Europe” rumour: true, but not for you
In recent weeks a piece of news has been circulating insistently: in Europe Windows 10 keeps receiving updates for free. It’s true, but it concerns a different category of user, and the confusion can be costly.
The free extension in the European Economic Area is reserved for private users, with their personal Microsoft account, and covers the period from October 2025 to October 2026. Business devices are excluded. In fact, the documentation is precise: PCs joined to an Active Directory domain, to Microsoft Entra, or managed through an MDM system are not eligible for the consumer programme.
In practice, the very thing that makes a PC “corporate”, namely being centrally managed, is what cuts it out of the free offer. A business owner who reads the headline and thinks they’re covered almost certainly isn’t, for the machines in the office.
What you actually pay for, and what you don’t
It’s worth being clear about what ESU gives you, because the name can be misleading. It includes only important and critical security updates. It does not include:
- new features;
- non-security updates;
- technical support, which is excluded unless you have a separate support plan.
In other words you pay, and pay more each year, to stand still: no improvement, no assistance, just the security patch on a system Microsoft has already retired. It’s a cost that only makes sense as a bridge to something else, not as a destination.
The right question isn’t technical, it’s about budget
Up to a point the choice looks like an IT one: upgrade to Windows 11 or pay for ESU. In reality, at this stage, it’s an economic decision. With a price that doubles and accumulates, every year spent on Windows 10 costs more than the year before, and that money produces nothing.
The calculation we suggest making, with your own company’s numbers in front of you, is simple:
- How many PCs are really still on Windows 10? Often fewer than you’d think, and the ESU cost on those few should be weighed against the alternative.
- How many of them can upgrade to Windows 11? Not all have the hardware requirements, and this splits the fleet into two groups with different solutions.
- How much does cumulative ESU cost over the next two years compared with renewing the machines that would need replacing anyway?
- The machines outside the requirements: is it worth keeping them alive at a cost, or replacing them, perhaps without tying up capital?
It’s on this last point that operational leasing often changes the maths: it lets you renew the PCs that don’t qualify for Windows 11 on a monthly fee, instead of paying for ESU to postpone or buying new hardware all at once. For part of the fleet it’s the cheaper route, with machines that are more secure and already set up.
Why waiting doesn’t pay
There’s also a reason that isn’t about price. An operating system at end of life is an attack surface that widens over time: every new vulnerability discovered after end of support, on PCs not covered by ESU, stays open. For a company that handles customer or supplier data, that’s a risk to put on the table alongside the cost of the licence.
The November deadline is therefore not a simple renewal to note in the diary. It’s the moment when the cost of not deciding starts to double. Better to reach it having already done the maths, and having chosen, rather than finding the year-2 ESU invoice and choosing by inertia.
