AWS Load Balancer Pricing: Complete Cost Breakdown

Introduction

When deploying applications on AWS, ensuring reliable and efficient traffic distribution is crucial for both performance and cost management. AWS offers several types of load balancers—Application Load Balancer (ALB), Network Load Balancer (NLB), Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB), and Classic Load Balancer (CLB)—each tailored for different networking needs and traffic patterns. However, understanding the pricing models for these services can be challenging, as costs are influenced not only by the type of load balancer but also by usage patterns, traffic volume, and additional AWS network charges.

This article provides a comprehensive breakdown of AWS load balancer pricing, demystifying the cost structures for ALB, NLB, GWLB, and CLB. We’ll explore how each load balancer is billed, from fixed hourly rates to usage-based charges that depend on metrics like connections, data processed, and rule evaluations. Whether you’re running a low-traffic web app or managing high-throughput network workloads, this guide will help you estimate monthly costs, understand the impact of AWS Free Tier, and make informed decisions to optimize both performance and budget.

All pricing is based on official AWS documentation and pricing pages, focusing on the us-west-1 (N. California) region.

Application Load Balancer (ALB) Pricing

Application Load Balancers (ALBs) operate at the request level (Layer 7), routing HTTP/HTTPS traffic. With ALB, AWS charges an hourly rate for each load balancer plus a usage-based charge measured in Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCUs). An LCU is a metric that quantifies the ALB’s workload across four dimensions: new connections, active connections, processed bytes, and rule evaluations. Essentially, you pay for the highest usage dimension in a given hour (AWS only charges on the dimension with the maximum usage). Below is a summary of ALB pricing components:

• Hourly ALB cost: Approximately $0.0252 per hour per ALB. You are billed for each hour or partial hour that the ALB is running.
• LCU usage cost: $0.008 per LCU-hour. This charge scales with the ALB’s usage. Each LCU includes up to 25 new connections per second, 3,000 active connections per minute, 1 GB of processed data per hour, and 1,000 rule evaluations per second (with the first 10 rules free). Only the dimension in which you use the most capacity drives the LCU charge each hour.

Example ALB Cost Calculation: Let’s say you have a web application behind an ALB. The ALB is running 24/7 (730 hours a month) and on average uses about 1 LCU of capacity per hour (this could correspond to a moderate traffic profile – for example, a few new connections per second, a few hundred active connections, and maybe ~1 GB/hour of traffic with some routing rules). Your monthly AWS Application Load Balancer pricing would be calculated like this:

• Hourly charge: $0.0252 per hour × 730 hours = $18.40 (base cost for having the ALB running all month).
• LCU usage charge: 1 LCU × $0.008 × 730 hours = $5.84 (usage cost for the traffic handled, assuming ~1 LCU usage each hour). If your traffic sometimes spikes above 1 LCU, the cost will increase proportionally – e.g., 2 LCUs usage would double this part of the cost.
• Total monthly ALB cost: ~$18.40 + $5.84 = $24.24.

Note: The AWS Free Tier covers 750 hours per month of load balancer usage (shared between ALB and CLB) and 15 LCUs of ALB usage per month. This means new AWS customers can run an ALB full-time for a month and process modest traffic (15 LCU-hours worth) without incurring ALB charges. Also, standard data transfer fees apply for data flowing in and out of the ALB (more on this at the end).

Network Load Balancer (NLB) Pricing

Network Load Balancers (NLBs) operate at the connection level (Layer 4), balancing TCP/UDP/TLS traffic with ultra-high performance and static IP addresses. The pricing model for NLB is analogous to ALB: you pay an hourly rate per NLB plus a usage-based charge per processed Network Load Balancer Capacity Unit (NLCU). NLCUs measure the NLB’s workload across dimensions like new connections (flows) per second, active connections, and data processed (bytes per hour), with slightly different counters optimized for network traffic. As with ALBs, you are charged only on the highest of the usage dimensions each hour.

Key pricing components for NLB:

• Hourly NLB cost: About $0.0252 per hour per NLB.  Each NLB you have running accrues this hourly cost.
• NLCU usage cost: $0.006 per NLCU-hour. You’ll be charged $0.006 for each NLCU of capacity used per hour. One NLCU of NLB capacity includes resources such as up to 800 new TCP connections per second (or 50 new TLS connections/sec for encrypted traffic), 100,000 active connections, and 1 GB/hour of data processed through the NLB. Similar to ALB, whichever dimension (connections or data) you max out in a given hour determines the NLCUs for that hour.

If your NLB handles more traffic, the usage cost rises accordingly. For instance, AWS provides an example of an NLB handling 1.08 GB/hour of traffic at peak, with negligible connection count, resulting in 1.08 NLCUs. In N. Virginia, that usage costs about $0.00648 per hour. In us-west-1, 1.08 NLCUs would similarly cost ~$0.00648 per hour (since the NLCU rate is $0.006) on top of the $0.0252 hourly fee, totaling roughly $0.0317 per hour or $22.8 per month for that higher-traffic scenario. The key point is that load balancer pricing on AWS for NLB scales with your usage: if you have spikes of many new connections or high throughput, the NLCU count increases, and so does the cost.

One advantage of NLB is its capacity for huge numbers of connections and ultra-low latencies, but from a cost perspective, you’ll want to architect efficiently.

Note: Enabling TLS/SSL on an NLB or using AWS PrivateLink/Gateway Load Balancer can have additional minor costs – e.g., TLS terminations consume NLCUs, and each Gateway Load Balancer endpoint is billed separately.

Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) Pricing

Gateway Load Balancers (GWLBs) enable you to seamlessly integrate third-party security or network analytics appliances—like firewalls, IDS/IPS, or packet brokers—into your traffic flow with minimal architectural changes. Their pricing follows a familiar pattern similar to other AWS load balancers: you pay a fixed hourly fee per Availability Zone, plus a usage-based charge measured in Gateway Load Balancer Capacity Units (GLCUs).

A GLCU reflects the highest usage among three dimensions during any given hour, and you are billed only for that peak dimension:

• New connections or flows, up to 600 per second
• Active connections or flows, up to 60,000 per minute
• Processed bytes, where 1 GLCU equals 1 GB per hour

The hourly cost for a GWLB is $0.014 per Availability Zone, and the usage cost is $0.004 per GLCU-hour.

For example, if a single-AZ GWLB handles 200 new flows per second, 18,000 active flows per minute, and 0.8 GB of traffic per hour, the dominant factor is the data processed. Since 0.8 GB is 0.8 of a GLCU, the total hourly cost combines the fixed charge ($0.014) and the usage charge (0.8 × $0.004 = $0.0032), totaling approximately $0.0172 per hour, or about $12.60 per month (assuming 730 hours).

To extend a GWLB across multiple VPCs, you use a Gateway Load Balancer Endpoint (GWLBE), which is billed similarly to an AWS PrivateLink interface endpoint. This includes a fixed hourly fee of $0.011 plus $0.01 per GB of data processed through the endpoint. Using the same 0.8 GB/hour traffic, the endpoint cost would be about $0.019 per hour, or roughly $13.90 per month.

Classic Load Balancer (CLB) Pricing

Classic Load Balancers (CLBs) are the original AWS load balancers, sometimes simply called “Elastic Load Balancing” in older contexts. They operate at both Layer 4 (transport) and Layer 7 (application) but offer fewer features compared to newer load balancers. The pricing model for CLBs is straightforward: you pay a fixed hourly rate per load balancer plus a data processing fee based on the amount of traffic handled.

Specifically, the hourly cost is about $0.028 per load balancer, and the data processing charge is $0.008 per GB of data that the load balancer forwards to your backend instances or returns to clients. For example, if your CLB processes 100 GB of traffic in a month, the data processing fees would be $0.80 (100 GB × $0.008).

To illustrate, imagine running a CLB for a full month (730 hours) that handles 200 GB of combined inbound and outbound traffic. Your monthly cost would include the hourly charges ($0.028 × 730 = $20.44) plus data processing fees (200 GB × $0.008 = $1.60), totaling $22.04.

If you’re still using Classic Load Balancers, it's worth noting that cross-zone load balancing no longer incurs additional fees—it’s now free on both CLB and ALB. However, standard AWS data transfer charges still apply. For instance, data transferred between instances and load balancers across different Availability Zones will incur the usual inter-AZ data transfer fees, and any traffic going out to the internet will incur internet egress charges. The $0.008 per GB processing fee from the CLB is charged on top of these network transfer costs, which are billed separately as part of your EC2 or VPC usage.

Additional Considerations

Data Transfer Fees

It’s important to note that Load Balancer fees are separate from AWS data transfer costs. All four types of load balancers discussed will incur standard AWS data transfer charges for traffic flowing in and out of the load balancer. For instance, if your clients download 100 GB of data through an ALB from EC2 instances, you’ll pay the ELB’s $0.008/GB processing (if it’s a CLB) plus the usual EC2 data transfer-out fee for 100 GB. Similarly, inter-AZ data between load balancers and backend targets is billed at the standard inter-AZ rate. Always factor in these network costs in addition to the load balancer’s own pricing. The AWS pricing page explicitly reminds users of this: “You will incur standard AWS data transfer charges, in addition to any ELB charges.”.

IP Address Charges

Network Load Balancers and Application Load Balancers use static IP addresses (NLB allocates one static IP per Availability Zone, and ALB can optionally use static IPs via AWS Global Accelerator). AWS charge for public IPv4 addresses not attached to running instances. For load balancers, any allocated Elastic IP addresses may incur a fee (approximately $0.005 per hour per IP in us-west-1) if they are not covered under the free tier of Amazon VPC. Typically, AWS allows one Elastic IP per load balancer for free (if attached and in use), but additional IPs or unused ones will be charged. In practice, this cost is minimal unless you have many idle load balancer IPs, but it’s worth mentioning as part of load balancer pricing considerations.

AWS Free Tier

As noted earlier, AWS’s free tier offers 750 hours of load balancer usage per month, which can cover one load balancer running full-time (either ALB or CLB). It also includes 15 GB of CLB data processing and 15 LCUs of ALB usage per month free. This is a great way to experiment with load balancers or run low-traffic sites at no charge in the first year. For NLB, while there isn’t a separate free tier allotment stated for NLCUs, the 750 hours of usage would apply if you choose NLB instead of ALB/CLB (the free tier is shared across Elastic Load Balancing products). Keep in mind that once you exceed those amounts, the standard rates discussed above will apply.

Monitor Your AWS Load Balancer Spend with Cloudchipr

Managing your AWS Load Balancers effectively goes beyond setup—actively monitoring and optimizing their usage is key to controlling cloud costs. Cloudchipr provides a powerful platform that offers multi-cloud cost visibility, enabling you to spot unused load balancers, automate their deletion, monitor usage patterns, and much more across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Key Features of Cloudchipr

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Commitments Tracking:

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Conclusion

Understanding the pricing models of AWS load balancers is essential for optimizing both your application performance and cloud costs. Whether you choose an Application Load Balancer (ALB) for advanced HTTP routing, a Network Load Balancer (NLB) for ultra-low latency, a Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) to seamlessly integrate network appliances, or a Classic Load Balancer (CLB) for simpler workloads, each comes with distinct pricing structures that reflect their capabilities and use cases.

By carefully analyzing your traffic patterns—such as connection rates, data throughput, and rule evaluations—you can better estimate monthly expenses and avoid unexpected charges. Additionally, leveraging tools like Cloudchipr can help automate monitoring, identify unused load balancers, and optimize resource usage, ensuring you maintain control over your cloud spend without sacrificing performance.

With a clear grasp of AWS load balancer pricing and proactive cost management strategies, you can make informed decisions that align with your technical needs and budget goals, ultimately driving more efficient and cost-effective cloud operations.