Difficulty: Easy
Description
Load Balancers that receive no traffic and consume no Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCUs) represent a fixed monthly cost with no active business value. We identified Load Balancers in your account that have been completely idle for over 31 days. These resources are typically remnants of decommissioned applications, completed migrations, or unused environments.
Selection Criteria
The Load Balancer has no incoming data in the last 31 days.
No LCUs consumed over the last 31 days
Expected Saving
Deleting an unused Load Balancer eliminates 100% of its cost. AWS charges a fixed hourly rate regardless of whether the LB receives traffic, plus additional charges per LCU consumed.
Load Balancer Type | Base cost/month (eliminated) | LCU charges (eliminated) |
ALB (Application Load Balancer) | ~$16.20 | • $0.008/LCU-hour |
NLB (Network Load Balancer) | ~$16.20 | • $0.006/LCU-hour |
GLB (Gateway Load Balancer) | ~$10.80 | • $0.004/GLB-CU-hour |
Example: 5 idle ALBs = ~$81/month eliminated in base costs alone, before LCU charges.
Operational Impact
⚠️ Deleting a Load Balancer is irreversible. Once deleted, the DNS name and configuration are permanently lost.
Before deleting, verify that no DNS entries (Route 53 aliases, CNAMEs) point to the Load Balancer's DNS name.
Check that no application configuration references the LB DNS name directly.
Review associated Target Groups and Security Groups — these are not automatically deleted and may need cleanup separately.