Windows 10 ESU Year Two: What Small Businesses Pay in 2026

Windows 10 ESU year two costs a business $122 per PC, double the $61 year-one price. Coverage is cumulative, so an office that skipped year one pays $183 per machine to catch up. For most small teams, replacing any PC that can run Windows 11 is cheaper than paying for two more years of patches.

Windows 10 stopped getting free security fixes on October 14, 2025. Many small offices bought a year of Extended Security Updates (ESU) to buy time, and many others just kept going without them. As of October 2026, both groups face the same question again, and the bill for waiting has doubled.

This guide is for owners and office managers at companies of roughly five to fifty people who handle IT themselves or with a part-time contractor. It covers what Windows 10 ESU costs now, what it actually protects, the cheaper routes Microsoft offers, and a simple way to decide machine by machine.

What Does Windows 10 ESU Year Two Cost a Small Business?

Windows 10 ESU year two costs $122 per device through Microsoft volume licensing, and the minimum order is one license. The price doubles each year for up to three years. A business that never bought year one must pay both years at once, which comes to $183 per PC before tax or reseller margin.

The numbers come straight from Microsoft's ESU program page for organizations. It sets the year-one price at $61 and says the price doubles every consecutive year. It also says you must buy by the full year. There is no six-month option.

The table below shows what that means for a single PC and for a ten-PC office.

The catch-up rule is the part most owners miss. Skipping year one did not save money. It only moved the charge to now, and Microsoft never offers a year-two-only price.

What Windows 10 Extended Security Updates Cover and What They Skip

Extended Security Updates deliver one thing: monthly patches for flaws Microsoft rates as critical or important. You get no new features, no bug fixes that aren't security fixes, and no general help desk. Microsoft only supports problems with installing and activating the ESU itself.

That narrow scope still matters a great deal. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) lists unsupported software first in its catalog of bad security practices. CISA calls it especially risky on machines that touch the internet. In a small office, that is every machine.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gives owners the same advice in plainer terms. Its cybersecurity guide for small businesses tells you to set a schedule for updating operating systems and turn on automatic updates. An unpatched Windows 10 PC can't follow that advice, no matter how careful its user is.

Two edge cases are worth knowing. A PC used only offline, such as one running an old label printer or a machine controller, carries far less risk. On the other hand, older line-of-business software may break on Windows 11. Those two cases are the honest reasons to pay for ESU.

Count Your Windows 10 PCs Before You Buy Anything

A quick inventory usually shrinks the ESU bill. Small offices tend to find spare laptops in drawers, a front-desk PC nobody uses, and machines that could have upgraded to Windows 11 last year. At Emazoo, we've seen the count drop by a third once someone actually walks the office.

Work through these steps in order, and write the results in one shared sheet.

The bar for Windows 11 is fixed. Microsoft's Windows 11 requirements call for a compatible 64-bit processor, 4 GB of memory, 64 GB of storage, UEFI with Secure Boot and a TPM 2.0 chip. Most PCs bought after 2019 pass. Many bought before 2018 fail on the processor alone.

Any PC that passes should upgrade now, for free. Paying $183 to keep an eligible machine on Windows 10 is the most common waste in this whole process.

Cheaper Routes Than Paying for Windows 10 ESU Per PC

Microsoft offers two lower-cost paths, and only one of them fits a business. The first is cloud PCs. The second is the consumer program, which looks tempting and is off-limits for company machines.

Cloud PCs are the legitimate shortcut. Windows 10 machines that connect to a Windows 365 Cloud PC get ESU for up to three years at no added cost, as long as the Windows 365 license stays active. ESU is also free for Windows 10 virtual machines in Azure Virtual Desktop. That makes sense for a team whose old laptops are mostly a window into a browser and a few web apps.

The consumer program is cheap for a reason. Microsoft's consumer ESU page offers coverage for $30, for 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or free with settings sync, and it now runs through October 12, 2027. The same page says it can't be used in commercial scenarios. It also blocks domain-joined PCs and devices managed through a mobile device management tool.

A sole proprietor on a personal laptop is in a gray zone. A five-person firm enrolling work PCs in the home program is not. If an auditor or cyber insurer asks how those machines are licensed, "the $30 option" is the wrong answer.

ESU or Replace: Doing the Math One Machine at a Time

The decision comes down to the PC's age, its job and what a new one would cost. A simple rule covers most offices: replace anything more than five years old, and only pay for ESU where something genuinely forces Windows 10 to stay.

Here is a worked example for one desk, using a $900 business laptop as the replacement.

The gap is smaller than it looks. ESU spends $427 on a machine that still has to be replaced in 2028. The new laptop spends $900 once and keeps working long after that.

Taxes also help the replacement option. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) de minimis safe harbor lets a business without audited financial statements deduct items costing up to $2,500 per invoice or item. Most laptops fall under that line, so you can usually expense them in the year you buy them. Confirm the election with whoever prepares your return.

The same logic applies to other aging systems. When we compared ways of moving a business off paper checks, the cheapest choice was rarely keeping the old setup. The real cost was the staff time it quietly ate.

A 90-Day Plan for Your Remaining Windows 10 Machines

Pacing matters because the next three months are already crowded. Year-end brings contractor paperwork under the new $2,000 1099 threshold, plus payroll changes such as the overtime tracking now required on 2026 W-2s. A PC swap that collides with payroll week is a bad idea.

This sequence spreads the work out, in the order it should happen.

Back up each PC before anything changes, and keep the old one for a week after its replacement arrives. Files that live only on a desktop are the usual casualty of a rushed swap.

The Bottom Line on Windows 10 ESU in 2026

Windows 10 ESU is a bridge, and year two makes it an expensive one at $122 per PC, or $183 if you are catching up. Use it for the few machines that truly can't move. Upgrade everything that passes the Windows 11 check, and replace the rest on a schedule.

Your next step is the inventory sheet. Emazoo covers how small companies choose and run their tools, and in our view the inventory is the one hour that pays for itself here. Once you know how many PCs you really have, the ESU decision usually makes itself.

Fact-checked against Microsoft, CISA, FTC and IRS sources as of October 19, 2026.