What Ubuntu Pro actually covers — and who should be paying for it

Ubuntu Pro explained: 36,000+ patched packages, up to 15 years of security maintenance, Livepatch, Landscape and compliance tooling in one subscription — and how to check what your own estate is running.

Category: Cloud & Infrastructure · Published: August 6, 2026 · 9 min read · Author: ZM Technologies Team

Most people running Ubuntu in production have heard of Ubuntu Pro and assume it is a support contract. It is broader than that, and the gap between what people assume and what is actually included is where most of the value sits.

Start with what is free

Ubuntu LTS releases ship every two years in April, and the version number is the date: 22.04 is April 2022, 24.04 is April 2024. Free, you get five years of security maintenance for packages in Ubuntu's Main repository, covering the operating system and its core components.

It does not cover the Universe repository, which is where most of the applications your teams actually deploy live. After five years, patches stop. Ubuntu 22.04 reaches that point in April 2027.

What the subscription adds

Coverage across 36,000+ packages

Extends security patching to over 36,000 open source packages in the Universe repository for up to ten years: Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Redis, Valkey, etcd and the long tail of things your applications depend on. The infrastructure-only tier covers over 4,700 packages in Main for an additional five years.

This is the part people underestimate — if your teams are pulling packages from community repositories and patching them by hand, that work is already being done for you inside a subscription.

Lifecycle to 15 years

Five years standard, ten with Ubuntu Pro, fifteen with the Legacy add-on. If an application is certified against a specific Ubuntu release, you can stay on it and stay patched.

Kernel patching without reboots

Livepatch applies critical and high-severity kernel fixes to running systems.

Compliance tooling

CIS and DISA-STIG hardening profiles via the Ubuntu Security Guide, plus FIPS-certified cryptographic modules. If you are working toward PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001 or a government standard, these are the controls that get asked about.

Fleet management

Landscape for centralised patching, monitoring, alerting and compliance reporting across physical, virtual, cloud and desktop machines. MAAS for bare-metal provisioning. Juju for application lifecycle automation. All included.

How it is licensed

Per machine, per year, with a server subscription covering unlimited virtual machines on that host. No socket, core or CPU counting. Enterprise support is a separate tier added on top, at 24/7 or weekday availability. On public cloud, Ubuntu Pro is metered hourly through your cloud bill. Personal use is free for a small number of machines.

Checking what you are running

If you already have Ubuntu servers, three commands tell you where you stand.

pro status --all        # what is entitled and enabled
pro security-status     # coverage breakdown by source
pro fix CVE-2024-XXXX   # remediate a specific CVE

Run pro security-status on a production box and you will see how many installed packages fall outside standard security maintenance. For most estates the number is larger than expected.

Who should be looking at this

You should look at Ubuntu Pro if:

It matters less if you are a small estate on the current LTS with plenty of runway and no compliance requirement.

Next step

ZM Technologies is an authorized Canonical partner. We will run a coverage assessment against your actual estate: which machines, which packages, what is exposed, and what a right-sized subscription looks like.