Windows 10 ESU

October 14, 2026 | 22 min

The Cost of Running Out of Support: What End-of-Life Systems Actually Do to an IT Bill and a Risk Profile

A research report on what end-of-support systems cost. It works through Microsoft's published Windows 10 Extended Security Updates price, doubling and cumulative-purchase rules, the costs that never appear on a renewal quote, named end-of-life entries in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue, what Singapore's Cyber Essentials mark says about end-of-support assets, and how to choose between refreshing, extending and running a system out. The Year Two and Year Three figures are the author's arithmetic from Microsoft's rule, and observations about client estates are Brocent's own and labelled as such.