What Extended Support Actually Costs: The Cross-Vendor Pricing Reference for Post-EOL Software
The question people actually type is the cost question. Our search data is unambiguous: buyers arrive asking "aws rds extended support cost," "oracle 11g extended support cost," "centos 7 extended support," "esm ubuntu" — and there is no cross-vendor answer published anywhere. Vendors publish their own number (sometimes), analysts publish estimates (usually wrong by the time you read them), and the third-party support market mostly answers with a sales call. This page is the reference we wished existed: every extended-support price we can trace to a vendor's own published price page or to our prior verified coverage, in one table — and where no public price exists, we say quote-based, because that is itself the answer, and it is true for most of the enterprise extended-support market.
One rule governs everything below: no estimates. A price appears here only if it is on a vendor's price page we fetched on the verification date, or in one of our own articles where we previously verified it against the source. Everything else is honestly labeled as not publicly priced. If a vendor's number changed after our verification date, their page wins — and each row links its source so you can check.
The five shapes of extended-support pricing
"How much does extended support cost?" has no single answer because it is not a single product. Across the 480+ products we track, paid life after end of life comes in five distinct pricing shapes — and knowing which shape you are in tells you most of what the invoice will look like:
1. Vendor-published per-device pricing. Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) programs are the canonical case: a public dollar figure per device per year, with the year-over-year escalation printed right in the FAQ. Windows 10 commercial ESU is $61 per device for year one, doubling every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years, per Microsoft's own documentation. You can budget it to the dollar — which is exactly the point of the doubling: it is designed to be budgetable and to sting more every year you stay.
2. Metered cloud pricing. AWS bills extended support the way it bills everything: per hour, automatically. EKS clusters on an old Kubernetes version are enrolled in extended support with no opt-in at $0.60 per cluster per hour instead of $0.10 — a 6x jump. RDS databases past end of standard support accrue $0.100 per vCPU-hour, doubling to $0.200 in year three. Nothing breaks, nothing asks permission; per our EKS analysis, the bill is the notification.
3. Subscription-gated pricing. Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE sell extended support as an entitlement attached to a subscription. Ubuntu's Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM) comes with Ubuntu Pro — free for up to 5 personal machines, $25 per desktop per year, $500 per server per year, per Canonical's published price list. Red Hat's Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) add-on and OpenShift's Extended Update Support (EUS) tiers are also subscription-gated, but with a difference: no public price. What Red Hat publishes is the mechanism — per our OpenShift 4.18 analysis, EUS Term 1 is included on Premium subscriptions and a paid add-on on Standard — and the dollar figure lives in your agreement.
4. Fee-waived extended support. The counterexample that proves pricing is a strategy, not a cost recovery: per Oracle's Java SE Support Roadmap and our JDK 17 analysis, Oracle waives the Extended Support fee for Java SE 17 from October 2026 through September 2029 — existing subscribers keep receiving patches with no new line item. Oracle gave Java 8 and 11 the same treatment. When a vendor wants you to stay put, extended support can cost nothing; when it wants you to move, it doubles annually.
5. Quote-based third-party support. The extended lifecycle support (ELS/ELTS) market — third-party vendors shipping security patches for CentOS 7, RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, old Java, old Windows and more after the original vendor stops — is where most enterprise post-EOL coverage actually gets bought, and it is overwhelmingly quote-based: priced per system, per core or per estate, negotiated per deal. Some vendors publish list prices; most enterprise coverage is quoted. That is not evasion — it is how this market works, and it is why we built a matching service instead of a price list we would have to fill with guesses.
The cross-vendor price table
Every row is hand-verified: the Published price column contains only figures read from the linked source — a vendor price page fetched on the verification date, or our own prior article where we verified the figure against the vendor. Where a row says quote-based, that is the finding: the vendor does not publish the number, and anyone who quotes you one anyway is guessing. Prices are USD list prices; negotiated enterprise agreements can and do differ.
| Product | What it buys | Pricing model | Published price (verified 2026-08-12) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 — consumer ESU | Critical + important security updates to Oct 12, 2027 | Per device, one-time enrollment | Free (settings sync) · 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points · or $30 one-time | Microsoft consumer ESU page |
| Windows 10 — commercial ESU | Yearly security updates, max 3 years (to Oct 2028) | Per device, per year — doubles annually, cumulative | $61 yr 1 → $122 yr 2 → $244 yr 3 (≈$427 total) · $0 on Azure VMs / Windows 365 / AVD | Microsoft ESU documentation |
| Windows Server 2012/R2 ESU | Final ESU year ends Oct 13, 2026 — then nothing, at any price | Per year, via volume licensing or Azure Arc | 100% of the full license price, each year — no year discount · $0 on Azure | Per our analysis of Microsoft's ESU FAQ |
| Amazon EKS | 12 more months of Kubernetes version support | Metered per cluster-hour — enrollment automatic, no opt-in | $0.60/cluster/hr vs $0.10 standard (6x) — ≈$438/mo vs ≈$73/mo per cluster | AWS EKS pricing page |
| Amazon RDS (MySQL / PostgreSQL) | Up to 3 years past end of standard support | Metered per vCPU-hour — enrollment automatic unless disabled | $0.100/vCPU-hr yrs 1–2, $0.200 yr 3 (AWS US East example rate) — Multi-AZ pays per instance | AWS RDS pricing page |
| Ubuntu — ESM (Ubuntu Pro) | +5 years of patching past LTS standard support (20.04 to Apr 2030, 22.04 to Apr 2032) | Per-machine subscription | Free up to 5 personal machines · $25/desktop/yr · $500/server/yr (unlimited VMs) — support plans extra | Canonical's Ubuntu Pro pricing page |
| RHEL — ELS add-on | RHEL 7 to May 31, 2029 · RHEL 8 to 2033 · RHEL 9 to 2036 (RHEL 6 ELS already ended Jun 30, 2024) | Subscription add-on | Quote-based — not publicly priced; sold through your Red Hat agreement | Our tracked lifecycle data |
| OpenShift — EUS | 4.18: EUS Term 1 to Feb 25, 2027; Term 2 to Feb 25, 2028 | Entitlement tier: included on Premium, paid add-on on Standard; Term 2 paid for everyone | Not publicly priced — your subscription tier decides whether you pay at all | Per our OpenShift 4.18 analysis |
| Oracle Java SE 17 | Extended Support, Oct 2026 – Sep 2029 | Fee waived | $0 above the existing Java SE subscription — the fee is waived through Sep 2029 | Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap |
| Oracle Database | Extended Support windows per release (19c Extended to 2032; 11g past every published phase) | Percentage uplift on the annual support contract, per Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy | Not publicly priced in dollars — the uplift applies to your contract value; post-window coverage (e.g. 11g) is negotiated | Per our Oracle Database analysis |
| Oracle Linux | OL7 Extended Support to Jun 2028 | Per-system support subscription | Quote-based — no fetchable public price list for the extended phase | Per our Oracle Linux analysis |
| Debian — ELTS (Freexian) | Debian 11 listed through Jun 30, 2031 — coverage scoped to subscribers' packages | Subscription, package-scoped | Quote-shaped — arranged with Freexian per estate; no flat public per-machine price | Per our Debian 11 analysis |
| SUSE — LTSS | Extra patch years past SLES general support | Add-on subscription | Quote-based — mechanism public, price not | Vendor publishes the mechanism only |
| CentOS 7 | Security patches past the Jun 30, 2024 EOL | Third-party ELS market only — there is no first-party option | Quote-based at most vendors — some publish list prices, most enterprise coverage is quoted | Per our CentOS 7 analysis · matching |
Prices verified 2026-08-12 against the linked vendor price pages (Microsoft, AWS, Canonical, Oracle roadmap) and our prior verified coverage; USD list prices. AWS rates are the published US East example — confirm your Region. "Quote-based" rows are the honest finding, not a gap: those vendors do not publish the number. We deliberately do not print third-party support vendors' prices here — they vary by estate and negotiation, which is why our matching service exists: tell us your product and we return the real options, including "no vendor covers this" when that is the truth.
The three traps in extended-support pricing
Trap 1 — prices that double annually. Microsoft's ESU escalator is printed in the documentation: $61, $122, $244 per Windows 10 device — and the years are cumulative, so an organization that waits until year two to enroll pays for year one anyway. AWS runs the same play at cloud speed: RDS Extended Support doubles from $0.100 to $0.200 per vCPU-hour at the start of year three. Per our RDS analysis, teams still on MySQL 5.7 have been paying the doubled rate since March 2026 — many without ever deciding to. The doubling is not cost recovery; it is a scheduled incentive, and budgeting extended support flat is how it surprises you.
Trap 2 — prices that start silently. On AWS, extended support is opt-out, not opt-in. EKS clusters crossing end of standard support are enrolled automatically at 6x; RDS instances accrue the per-vCPU charge from the day standard support ends unless enrollment was explicitly disabled at instance creation. Nothing breaks, no alarm fires — per our EKS analysis, the bill is the notification. Microsoft has its own version: enrolling Azure Arc ESU late triggers a one-time back-bill for the missed months. Across vendors the pattern is consistent — delay does not reduce the price, and silence does not mean you are not paying it.
Trap 3 — extended support that outlives its usefulness. Every program in the table has an end, and some ends are cliffs: Windows Server 2012/R2's final ESU year closes October 13, 2026, after which Microsoft ships nothing at any price. RHEL 6's ELS already closed in June 2024. Paying for extended support does not stop the clock — it rents a quieter room while the clock runs. The site-wide framing applies here with money attached: extended support is a bridge, not a destination, and a bridge you pay annually for — at rates designed to escalate — while the migration it was supposed to buy time for still waits at the far end.
The cost questions people actually ask
These are real search queries that land on this site. Each gets the direct answer the query deserves — a sourced number where one is published, and an honest "not publicly priced" where it is not.
How much does Amazon EKS extended support cost?
$0.60 per cluster per hour, versus $0.10 in standard support — 6x, per AWS's EKS pricing page. That is roughly $438/month per cluster instead of $73, it starts automatically when the Kubernetes version leaves standard support, and it lasts at most 12 months before AWS force-upgrades the control plane. Full version dates in our EKS reference.
How much does Windows Server 2012 extended support cost?
Per our ESU-cliff analysis of Microsoft's ESU FAQ: 100% of the full Windows Server license price, for each ESU year, with no discount in any year — or free on Azure (VMs, Dedicated Host, Azure VMware Solution, Azure Stack), which is the deliberate incentive. The more important number now is a date: the third and final ESU year ends October 13, 2026. After that, there is no price — Microsoft ships no further Windows Server 2012/R2 security updates through any channel.
How much does Oracle 11g extended support cost?
This is the cost question with a date problem. Oracle prices Extended Support as a percentage uplift on your annual support contract — the structure is published in Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy, and because it is a percentage of what you already pay, there is no single dollar figure to quote. But for Database 11g specifically, the Extended Support window itself is long over: per our Oracle Database analysis, 11g is past every published support phase. What remains is negotiated — Oracle's market-driven support arrangements or the third-party support market, both quote-based. If you are budgeting for 11g in 2026, you are pricing a negotiation, not a list.
What does Ubuntu ESM cost?
ESM comes with Ubuntu Pro, and Canonical publishes the price list: free for up to 5 machines on a personal subscription, $25 per desktop per year, and $500 per server per year covering unlimited VMs on that host — phone-and-ticket support plans cost extra on top. That extends security maintenance five years past each LTS's standard window (Ubuntu 20.04 to April 2030, 22.04 to April 2032, per our Ubuntu EOL guide). Among enterprise extended-support programs, this is the most transparently priced row in the table.
How much does CentOS 7 extended support cost?
There is no first-party answer: CentOS 7 reached end of life June 30, 2024, the project ships nothing further, and Red Hat's ELS covers RHEL, not CentOS. Extended CentOS 7 patching exists only in the third-party ELS market, where pricing is per-system or per-estate and mostly quote-based — some vendors publish list prices, but enterprise coverage is negotiated deal by deal. Our CentOS 7 migration guide covers the exit paths; if you need the bridge priced for your actual estate, our matching service returns real options rather than a number we would have to invent.
How much does RHEL extended support cost?
Red Hat does not publish an ELS price — it is a subscription add-on, quoted through your Red Hat agreement. What is public is the coverage: per our tracked data, RHEL 7 ELS runs to May 31, 2029, RHEL 8's to May 31, 2033, RHEL 9's to May 31, 2036. And for anyone searching "RHEL 6 end of life extended support": that window is closed — RHEL 6 ELS ended June 30, 2024, so RHEL 6 today is in the same position as CentOS 7 — third-party market or migration, with the minor-version trap waiting for whoever migrates carelessly.
The honest arithmetic: when the bridge costs more than the crossing
With real prices on the table, the decision math stops being abstract. Run it with the verified numbers above — these are multiplications, not estimates:
- A 4-vCPU RDS MySQL instance riding Extended Support to the end pays roughly $292/month for two years and $584/month for the third — about $14,000 single-AZ, $28,000 Multi-AZ, on top of the normal instance cost, for one database. A version upgrade project is usually cheaper than year three alone.
- One EKS cluster in extended support for its full 12 months pays about $4,380 extra (the $0.50/hour uplift) — times three for the classic dev/staging/prod trio on the same old version.
- 1,000 Windows 10 devices on commercial ESU for the full three years cost about $427,000 — against a hardware refresh that was going to happen anyway, that is rent paid to stand still.
The pattern mirrors the decision framing we apply across the site: how many more years does this system need to run? Under a year, extended support — where it exists — is usually cheaper than an emergency migration, and that is its legitimate job: it converts a panic into a project. One to three years, the arithmetic usually inverts: escalating fees paid repeatedly cost more than doing the migration once, and at the end of the fees the migration still has to happen. Indefinitely, migrate now — every table row above either doubles, meters, or ends. The vendors price it this way on purpose, and reading the table as a schedule of deliberate incentives, not costs, is the most useful thing this page can teach.
Price your actual estate, not the average
Everything above is list-price truth, and list price is where the conversation starts, not where it ends. Which options exist for your product and version, whether the quote-based market covers it at all, and whether the honest answer is "migrate, nothing covers this" — that is a per-product question, and answering it is literally what we do. Tell us what you are running and we will match you to the real extended-support options — including pricing guidance for the quote-based rows this page honestly cannot print, and including "no vendor covers this" when that is the truth. Free, no obligation, and vendors do not pay for placement. Not sure what you are running past its dates? Check any version in seconds, or see what hits end of life next.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does extended support cost after end of life?
There is no single price — extended support comes in five pricing shapes. Vendor-published per-device pricing: Microsoft charges $61 per device for Windows 10 ESU year one, doubling each year (consumer ESU is $30 one-time, 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or free with settings sync). Metered cloud pricing: AWS bills EKS extended support at $0.60 per cluster per hour (6x the standard $0.10) and RDS Extended Support at $0.100 per vCPU-hour, doubling in year three. Subscription-gated pricing: Ubuntu Pro runs $25 per desktop or $500 per server per year, free for up to 5 personal machines; Red Hat ELS and OpenShift EUS are priced inside subscription agreements, not published. Fee-waived: Oracle waives the Java SE 17 Extended Support fee from October 2026 through September 2029. And the third-party ELS market for products like CentOS 7 is mostly quote-based — the price exists, but you have to ask.
How much does AWS RDS extended support cost?
Amazon RDS Extended Support is billed per vCPU-hour, automatically, once a database engine version passes its end of standard support — $0.100 per vCPU-hour in years one and two, doubling to $0.200 in year three, per the example rate AWS publishes on its RDS pricing page. For a 4-vCPU instance that is roughly $292 per month, and Multi-AZ deployments pay per instance, so a primary-plus-standby pair pays double. Enrollment is automatic unless it was explicitly disabled: the charge starts the day standard support ends, which is why the bill is often the notification.
How much does Windows 10 extended support cost?
For individuals, Windows 10 consumer ESU costs $30 one-time, 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or nothing at all if you sync your PC settings — all three options cover critical and important security updates through October 12, 2027. For organizations, commercial ESU costs $61 per device for year one and doubles every consecutive year for a maximum of three years — $61, then $122, then $244, about $427 per device for the full run. The years are cumulative: enrolling in year two means paying for year one as well. Windows 10 virtual machines on Azure, Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop get ESU at no additional cost.
Is extended support cheaper than migrating?
Over a short horizon, usually yes: one to three years of extended support is often cheaper than an emergency migration done badly, and that is exactly what it is for — buying an orderly migration instead of a rushed one. Over a multi-year horizon the arithmetic usually inverts: fees that double every year (Microsoft ESU), bill every hour (AWS), or renew indefinitely (subscription ELS) eventually exceed the one-time cost of the migration you still have to do at the end. Extended support is a bridge, not a destination — price the bridge against the date you will actually cross it, not against doing nothing.
Related
- Extended support options, matched to your product — the routing layer for every quote-based row above
- The Windows Server 2012 ESU cliff — the program that ends at any price on October 13, 2026
- AWS started charging for MySQL 8.0 on August 1 — the RDS Extended Support mechanics
- Amazon EKS: 14 months of standard support, then the bill is the notification
- Java 17's September 30 deadline — where the extended-support fee is waived
- Debian 11's last month of free patches — and the ELTS bridge behind it