// Upgrade vs extended support calculator
Upgrade now or extend support?
Enter your own upgrade effort, engineer day rate, downtime cost and an extended support quote. The calculator compares the cost of moving now with the cost of staying for the years you choose, shows the formula and the break-even point, and holds no vendor prices, ours included.
When a version reaches end of life, you either upgrade to a supported one or pay someone to keep patching the old one. Both cost money, and the cheaper answer depends on how much work your upgrade is and what a support quote costs. This page does the arithmetic from your figures. It does not tell you which to choose.
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Your estimate
Updates as you type. Built only from your inputs.
Enter your upgrade effort and an extended support cost to compare the two. Or press “Fill with example numbers” to see how it works.
Estimates from your own inputs. Not a quote. The arithmetic runs in your browser.
How this is calculated
Every number below is one you type in. The formulas are the whole model, so you can check them or rebuild them in a spreadsheet.
- Cost of moving now
- (instances × engineer-days per instance × cost of an engineer-day) + (testing and re-certification days × cost of an engineer-day) + your one-off downtime and risk cost. It happens once, now.
- Cost of staying
- (extended support cost per year + other yearly cost of staying) × years you plan to stay. If you tick the box that says you will still have to upgrade at the end, the cost of moving is added once at the end of the period, at today's figure.
- Difference
- Cost of staying minus cost of moving. A positive number means moving is cheaper over your chosen period. A negative number means staying is cheaper.
- Break-even
- Cost of moving divided by the yearly cost of staying. It is the number of years after which paying for extended support has cost as much as the upgrade would have. If you enter no yearly cost of staying, there is no break-even.
- Limits
- Inputs are held to sane ranges so the layout and the arithmetic stay intact: up to 10,000 instances, 1,000 engineer-days per instance, 10,000 engineer-days of testing, 10,000 per engineer-day, one billion for any money field and 10 years. Anything blank, negative or not a number counts as zero.
Worked example
These numbers are made up to show the arithmetic. They are not a benchmark and not typical of any estate. The "Fill with example numbers" button loads the same figures.
| Instances to upgrade | 4 |
|---|---|
| Engineer-days per instance | 5 |
| Testing and re-certification days | 10 |
| Cost of an engineer-day | $800 |
| Downtime and risk cost, one-off | $5,000 |
| Extended support per year | $20,000 |
| Years staying | 2 |
| Upgrade labour: 4 × 5 × $800 | $16,000 |
|---|---|
| Testing: 10 × $800 | $8,000 |
| Downtime and risk | $5,000 |
| Cost of moving | $29,000 |
| Cost of staying: $20,000 × 2 | $40,000 |
| Difference (staying minus moving) | $11,000 |
| Break-even | 1.45 years |
In this example, moving costs $29,000 once and staying costs $20,000 a year, so staying overtakes the upgrade after 1.45 years. Change one figure, such as engineer-days per instance, and the answer can flip. That sensitivity is the reason to use your own numbers.
What the calculator leaves out
- Price changes over the period, discounting and inflation. Every year is counted at the figure you entered.
- The cost of an incident while a version is unpatched. If you want it in the comparison, put your own estimate in "Other yearly cost of staying".
- Benefits of the new version, such as performance, features or lower licence cost. The comparison is cost to cost.
- Vendor deadlines. A cloud provider can start charging for extended support on a fixed date, and a certification can lapse on another. Check those dates against the version's end-of-life date before you rely on a break-even.
When this is not the right tool
If you are replacing the product rather than upgrading it, for example moving from a commercial database to PostgreSQL, the effort is a migration project, and a single engineer-days-per-instance figure will understate it. Estimate the project separately and enter the total as the downtime and risk cost, or use the engineer-days fields for the whole project.
If you have no extended support quote yet, the staying side is empty and the result only shows the cost of moving. Ask two or three vendors to quote the same list of instances and versions first.
How much does an upgrade really cost?
Engineer time is usually most of it: the days to upgrade each instance, the testing days to prove the new version behaves, and re-certification if an auditor or software vendor has to approve the change. Add the cost of downtime and of a rollback if the change goes badly. The calculator totals these from your own estimates. We do not publish a typical figure, because it varies too much between estates to be useful.
What is the difference between extended support and upgrading to a newer version?
Upgrading moves you to a version the project still maintains, which ends the problem once the work is done. Extended support, which some vendors sell as extended security updates, keeps your current version of the software patched after the end of support, so you keep running what you have. The upgrade is a one-off cost that you can plan. Extended support is a recurring cost that continues for as long as you stay.
How do you decide whether to upgrade or use extended support?
Compare the one-off cost of the move with the yearly cost of staying, over the years you expect to keep the system. If the upgrade is small and the system will live for years, moving usually costs less. If the upgrade is large, the system will be retired soon or an upgrade date is already fixed for later, staying can cost less. Run both cases here, then check the end-of-life date and any deadline set by a cloud provider or auditor.
What are the risks of using software after support ends?
New vulnerabilities are published and the project no longer fixes them for your version, so the exposure grows over time. Auditors can raise findings against unpatched software, and some software vendors stop certifying their products on an end-of-life platform. Extended support reduces the patching risk. It does not remove the need to plan an upgrade.
How long does extended support last?
It depends on the vendor and the product. Some arrangements run for a year at a time, and others for several years from a published end date. Ask each vendor for the end date in writing and compare it with the number of years you entered above. Our end-of-life tracker lists the community end-of-life date for each version we cover.
Does the calculator include OSSeva prices?
No. OSSeva support is quoted after a discovery call, and the calculator contains no price from any vendor. Enter the cost from a quote you hold, from OSSeva or anyone else, and the calculator treats it like any other figure you type.
Get a quote
Put a real quote next to your numbers
Bring your instance list and versions. We scope the same coverage with you, line by line, so the staying side of this calculator is a quote and not a guess. Reply within 1 business day.
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