Elastic Load Balancing Cost Optimization
Load balancers have a fixed hourly cost plus charges per LCU (Load Balancer Capacity Unit). The biggest waste comes from load balancers that serve minimal or zero traffic — leftover from projects that were decommissioned but the load balancer was not. Classic Load Balancers also carry higher costs than ALBs for the same workload.
Common ELB cost waste patterns
Idle load balancers
Load balancers with zero or near-zero request counts. Each ALB costs ~$16/month minimum just to exist, even with no traffic.
Classic Load Balancers still in use
CLBs are a previous generation and lack features of ALBs and NLBs. They often cost more for equivalent workloads and should be migrated.
Redundant load balancers
Multiple load balancers that could be consolidated using host-based or path-based routing on a single ALB.
How to reduce your ELB costs
Delete idle load balancers
Save 100% easyCheck CloudWatch RequestCount and ActiveConnectionCount metrics. Load balancers with zero traffic over 14+ days can typically be deleted safely.
Migrate Classic to ALB
Save 10-30% mediumALBs support host-based and path-based routing, letting you consolidate multiple CLBs into one ALB. Use the AWS Migration Wizard for assisted migration.
Consolidate load balancers with routing rules
Save 30-50% mediumUse ALB host-based routing to serve multiple applications from a single load balancer instead of one per application.
How ZapStack finds ELB waste
ZapStack automatically scans your AWS environment and surfaces ELB cost savings you can action immediately.
- Detects idle load balancers with no traffic
- Identifies Classic Load Balancers for migration
- Flags redundant ALBs that could be consolidated
- Calculates per-LB savings from deletion
- Recommends routing-based consolidation
Frequently asked questions about ELB costs
Related AWS services
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ECS Cost Optimization
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