EOL Date: What It Means and How to Look One Up for Any Software

By Scott Bissett  ·  Published: October 20, 2026  ·  Reference guide  ·  Every date on this page is read from vendor lifecycle data and re-checked at every site build.

An EOL date (end-of-life date) is the last day a software maker publishes fixes for a version, including security patches; after it the version keeps running, unpatched. Every version of a product has its own EOL date, and the primary source for each one is the vendor's own lifecycle page. endoflife.ai reads those pages and the open endoflife.date dataset, labels where each date came from, and publishes one page per product with every version's dates: open the product index or type a product name into the EOL Checker and read the row for your version. The dates people look up most are in the table below, live.

EOL dates people look up most

Each row is one version's end-of-life date as the vendor's lifecycle data serves it today. The rows are re-read at every build of this site; the product link opens the page with every other version.

Not here? The product index covers every tracked product, and the 2026 EOL calendar lists every date left this year in order.

What an EOL date does and does not cover

The date marks the end of the maker's fixes, not the end of the software. Three things follow from that:

• Security fixes stop. A vulnerability disclosed the day after the date is never patched in that version. CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog lists flaws in end-of-life versions regularly, which is why EOL status is a factor in the EOL Risk Score on every version page here.
• Vendor support stops. Help-desk cases, hotfixes and certifications for the version end with it, on most vendors' terms.
• The software runs on. Nothing switches off. That is what makes the date easy to miss, and why an inventory with every version's EOL date is the first control in a lifecycle policy.

Some vendors sell a bridge past the date: Microsoft's Extended Security Updates and Red Hat's Extended Life Cycle Support are the best known. A bridge moves the practical deadline for customers who buy it. It does not move the EOL date, and our pages show both.

Why one version can carry several dates

Many vendors publish more than one dated phase per version, and the words differ by vendor. A typical Microsoft fixed-lifecycle product has a mainstream support end (new features and non-security fixes stop) and an extended support end (security fixes stop); the second is the EOL date. Red Hat has Full Support, Maintenance Support and a paid Extended Life Cycle Support add-on. Open-source projects usually publish one date for active support and one for security fixes. On every endoflife.ai product page the columns are named by phase, and the end-of-life date is the end of the last phase that ships fixes on a standard licence or subscription. The EOL meaning page defines the abbreviations (EOL, EOS, EOSL, EOM) in one table.

Where the dates come from

The vendor's own lifecycle page is the primary source for every EOL date. Where a vendor publishes a machine-readable page or API, endoflife.ai reads it directly at every build and treats it as the source of record; where it does not, the date is served from the open endoflife.date dataset and labelled as such. Each date on a product page says which source it came from, and the accuracy page records every correction with its source. Dates do change: vendors extend support, estimated months become firm days, and occasionally a date moves earlier. Unusual changes are held for review before they are published.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• EOL product index — every tracked product and its versions
• EOL Checker — one product, one search
• The 2026 EOL calendar — every end-of-life date left this year
• What does EOL mean? — the full form and the terms around it
• What is EOL? The full guide
• How we verify our dates