Windows 11 Updates Will Become Paid: Fact or Fiction?

You may have seen articles or messages stating that Microsoft will charge for future updates to Windows 11. Should you be alarmed? Here's what you need to know.

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A wave of panic has been blowing through social networks, forums, and certain press titles for some time now: Microsoft will start charging for security updates for Windows starting this summer of 2025. What's the real story? We'll help you see things more clearly and understand if you'll have to get out your credit card to keep your OS up to date.

A paid subscription will indeed be set up by the publisher starting July 2025. But this absolutely does not apply to individuals with a PC running Windows 11. Your personal computer will continue to receive security patches and feature updates as usual, without having to pay after purchasing the operating system license.

Hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 is becoming a paid service

As Windows Central explains, this paid offer will be available for Windows Server 2025, which mainly affects businesses. Until now, hotpatching was free on Windows Server 2025, which was still in preview. With the upcoming availability of the stable version of Windows Server 2025, this option will become paid.

Hotpatching is a new feature that has been integrated with Windows Server 2025. It allows security updates to be installed without needing to restart the system. A boon for administrators, who can sometimes be quite bothered when it comes to restarting servers depending on the company's activity and its IT infrastructure. This also reduces the window of vulnerability during which servers remain unprotected, since there is no longer any need to wait for a reboot for the patch to take effect.

Thanks to hotpatching, the number of necessary server reboots will be reduced to approximately four times per year, much less than currently. But this advantage will therefore come at a cost. The price announced by Microsoft is USD 1.50 per processor core per month, a pricing policy based on CPU configuration that has drawn strong criticism from professionals.