Windows 10 Extended Security Updates: What Year Two Really Costs Your Business

Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025. A year later, plenty of businesses still have Windows 10 machines running, and many are keeping them patched through Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. It's worth stopping to look at what that costs, because the price doesn't stay flat.

The ESU math, straight from Microsoft

According to Microsoft's ESU documentation, commercial pricing works like this:

  • Year One: $61 per device.

  • The price doubles every year. Year Two is $122 per device, and Year Three follows at $244.

  • ESU is cumulative. If you skipped Year One and sign up for Year Two, you pay for both years: $183 per device.

Scale that across a fleet and it adds up fast. For 100 PCs that start ESU in Year Two, the bill is $18,300. That buys security patches only. There are no new features and no technical support.

These are Microsoft's commercial prices. Education pricing is different, so this article is written for businesses.

Old PCs aren't gaining value

While ESU costs go up every year, the resale value of the same aging PCs doesn't. Every month a machine sits in service or in a storage room, the case for paying to keep it running gets weaker. For many organizations, the money is better spent on replacement hardware.

A better order of operations

If you still have Windows 10 machines in service, here's a simple way to approach it:

  1. Sort your fleet. Figure out which machines can run Windows 11 and which can't.

  2. Send us the list of the ones that can't. A spreadsheet or rough inventory is fine. We pick up anywhere in the country.

  3. Get a quote on what has resale value. We pay for items with resale value. We don't pay for items without it, but we still take them. Every drive is wiped to NIST 800-88 certified standards or physically destroyed, and the rest is recycled responsibly. Disposal fees are rare and apply only to a few items, such as old CRT TVs.

  4. Put what comes back toward new hardware. Buyback value from eligible equipment can help offset the cost of your refresh.

Why RePower

RePower is an IT asset disposition (ITAD) and IT buyback company in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. We accept any IT equipment in any condition, including laptops, desktops, servers, networking gear, monitors, and peripherals. About 25,000 devices come through our warehouse every month. Every one gets secure data handling:

  • NIST 800-88 certified data erasuree, with a serialized certificate of erasure for every job

  • Physical destruction when a drive can't be wiped

  • R2 certificates of destruction provided

Stop paying to patch hardware you're replacing anyway

Before you renew ESU for another year, find out what your Windows 10 machines are worth and let us handle the rest securely.

Send us your equipment list and get a free quote within 24 hours, or call (224) 360-1500 (8 AM–4 PM CT, Monday–Friday). RePower, LLC · 1692 Barclay Blvd, Buffalo Grove, IL 60089.