How to legally buy Windows 10 Pro?

You are considering purchasing an operating system Windows 10 Pro and you do not know the difference between the full and upgraded version? It is even possible to obtain Windows 10 Pro license based on the cross-downgrade right from a higher edition of the Windows OS, such as Enterprise LTSB or LTSC. Look at the meaning of the above-mentioned terms and find out how to obtain a Windows 10 Pro licenses for your company cheaply and legally.

You can legally purchase Windows 10 Pro in the following variants:

Windows 10 Pro full version
Windows 10 Pro Upgrade
Windows 10 Pro, based on the cross-downgrade right from the Enterprise LTSB/LTSC edition

If you are interested to find out the differences between the editions of Windows 10, read our previous article.

Windows 10 Pro full version

This is a classic operating system license meant for devices with a missing qualified underlying license (as for example new hardware unit without OS). You can purchase the full Windows 10 Pro operating system as a secondary license with saving of up to 80 %.

Price Windows 10 Pro

Windows 10 Pro Upgrade

Windows 10 Pro Upgrade is a standalone license that allows you to upgrade from legally purchased licenses of an older qualified operating system version (as for example Windows 7 Professional). After the upgrade is done, the previous version of the software may no longer be used on another device. Therefore, the underlying license and the upgrade license are merged, resulting in a full-fledged license for the Windows 10 Pro operating system.

Did you know that...

A Qualified Underlying License is a full-featured operating system license of an older version of the same or higher edition?

See from which underlying license a legal upgrade to Windows 10 Pro is possible

	Windows 10 Pro Upgrade
Windows 10 Home
Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise
Windows 8/8.1 Pro
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Home
Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Ultimate
Windows Vista Home
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Tablet Edition
Windows XP Pro N, XP Pro Blade PC
Windows XP Home, Start edition

In the table above, you can see that upgrading to Windows 10 Pro from Home Edition using an upgrade license is not legal. Although the process is technically possible, it is not in accordance with the license conditions of Microsoft. In this case, we recommend that you purchase the full version of Windows 10 Pro. Above mentioned topic was in details discussed in our article.

Windows 10 Pro and cross-downgrade rights

Microsoft allows you to downgrade software under certain conditions, as for example the change of the same software product within different (older) versions (eg from Windows 11 Pro to Windows 10 Pro).

However, there are some exceptions. Microsoft allows you to apply same principle in case of Windows Enterprise LTSB 2016 or LTSC 2019 and move to Windows 10 Pro. However, it is not possible to downgrade from the Pro edition to a lower edition such as Home.

With cross-downgrade right, you can get Windows 10 Pro mainly from two products: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC a Windows 11 Pro.

Downgrade rights