Do $3 Windows 10 and Windows 11 Product Activation Keys work?

FOR SALE: Windows 10 Activation Licence Keys are available on eBay/ Craigslist/ AliExpress and other cheap websites.
Do these Windows keys work?
Are these Activation keys legal or is this just another scam?
Can you really buy cheap Windows 10 Home or Windows 11 for $3?
I bought 15 of these keys to find out!

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[TrudieGenualdo]

Most of these sites, especially the really cheap ones sell OEM keys. They are illegal for individual use because they aren't Retail keys. They always go invalid. My computer isn't activated anymore because I bought a OEM key and it went invalid. I can't afford one a retail one from Microsoft :(

[MatildeMintreas]

Price so cheap in hypestkey, and they partner Microsoft.

[yourpcmd]

Going to have to tell you that you CAN legally use Windows 7 keys to activate Windows 10 with no issues. My Microsoft Rep validated this because I had bought several (50+) Win7 keys during the 1909 days from my distributor and was worried I wasted money. To this day I use them to activate Windows 10 (only a handful left though).

[IamNmbrONE]

there's nothing wrong with the windows 7 key it works just fine and can upgrade all the way to 11

[AdityaSingh]

If it activates and updates work, then it's legit enough!

[errab]

I've had a lot of success with buying cheap keys. I've had many OEM keys that that have cost me about 3 bucks each. My trick is that if move to a new PC, I just take the old hard drive and clone it over to my new PC, it gets treated as an upgrade and I do a repair install to iron out any issues the OS might have on the new PC. When I do find cheap working keys, I tend to buy at least 5 of them. I'm still using a key that I bought for Windows 8.1 pro back in 2014 for a few bucks and it is the key that allowed me to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and I'm currently running Windows 11 Pro off the same key.

[jb]

Pre pandemic I used to volunteer at my local Free Geek, we would refurbish computers and install Linux. We would remove the Windows license tags as part of the refurbish process. One of the other volunteers would take pictures of the tags before removal, and would sell them online. That seemed suspect to me.

[billcarson]

You may not need to buy prepaid cards to make purchases. Most big credit card companies have an APP or browser extension that allows you to create a virtual credit card number that can be used again or disposed of after one purchase. You can limit or allow renewals and further purchases and you can also be refunded, even if you dispose of the virtual number.

[TechKerry]

Windows 7 can be upgraded for free to Windows 10. You can use that key to activate Windows 10 Home since it was a Windows 7 Home key.

[KeinNiemand]

Never had any problem with thesse cheap keys, sure I usually get OEM keys but for how cheap they are it dosn't matter if I have to buy a new one when moving to a new computer.

[Omega_Mark]

That Windows 7 Basic license is just fine for an upgrade to Windows 10 (non-Pro) or even Windows 11. If you got it for ~$2, what do you expect? On the other hand, that $30 one better be retail;). As far as I know, the Vista one should not work, but who knows with Microsoft these days.

[idahofur]

The problem I have seen with these keys. This is before windows 10. You would activate windows (including windows servers.) then in 1 year or so. Maybe less or more. You need to reload your machine. You go and re-activate your windows. The system won't activate it on-line. So you call in and they then tell you the same thing. Sometimes they would tell me the key was used to many times or the key was banned. Since windows 10 is digital activated. I have not seen it at all unless I tried to move the license onto another machine. Oh and once in a blue moon. The system would deactivate itself.

[tamasayo]

There are so many wrong things with this video, idk where you "buy" these keys, but I can tell you that every cheap license key I buy for less than 5$ were Windows 10 Pro Retail keys.

[jcv]

They do work, but they expire after 1 years or so, so there is no way to make any claim or get a refund after that long. Personal experience.

[hevangel]

If Microsoft really cares about the lose of sales of those keys, it has the means to prevent any activation. Obviously, $MSFT doesn't care

[Doc.LifeFactsHacks]

I knew about the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) & Retail keys. I had no idea that there’s also a third type- aka Volume. Thanks for the vid. I buy from MS directly, so all my keys are totally legit.

[nickjulyA]

The Windows 10 Education licences come from Microsoft's Dreamspark program given to college students usually in the tech/IT field. I got a key myself since I'm in the Computer Science degree at my college and I use it on a PC that I built recently. The University edition is nice because it comes with nearly all the features of the Enterprise edition of Windows 10.

I'm assuming someone at a college probably just sold their key to one of those sites so it can still be useful.

[Omega_Mark]

Microsoft is just happy that you use Windows 10/11, so they can collect data from you.

[Angultra]

A legit Windows 7 license can still upgrade for free to Windows 10, so could technically work.

[dread]

Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 keys work to upgrade to Windows 10/11. So some cheap keys are legit, I've used multiple in the past to get "Digitally certified" for activation.