The Tool Desk
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An idle Application Load Balancer (ALB) can keep costing money simply because it is still running. AWS’s US-East-1 pricing example lists a base charge of $0.0225 per ALB-hour—$16.20 over a 30-day month at 24 hours a day—before any load balancer capacity usage (LCU) charges. That is an example, not a universal monthly bill: rates vary by Region and usage. Low traffic alone does not prove an ALB is safe to delete.
Why an idle ALB can still appear on your bill
AWS charges for each hour or partial hour an Application Load Balancer runs, whether or not it handles much traffic. The AWS pricing page gives a US-East-1 example of $0.0225 per ALB-hour. Multiplying that example by 24 hours and 30 days gives $16.20 in base running-time charges; it is arithmetic based on the example rate, not a separately published monthly price. LCU usage can add charges, and the applicable rates depend on Region and metered usage. Check AWS Elastic Load Balancing pricing for the relevant Region and compare it with your account’s bill.
An ALB distributes requests to targets and monitors their health. A quiet period may be normal for a production service, a rarely used application, or a system that has seasonal demand. Treat low traffic as a reason to investigate—not as evidence that the load balancer is obsolete.
Identify what the bill is charging for
Start with the billing and usage report rather than assuming one line item represents the whole ALB cost. AWS identifies Elastic Load Balancing charges by usage code and unit; running time and capacity usage are separate meters.
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- LoadBalancerUsage: load balancer running time, measured in hours.
- LCUUsage: load balancer capacity usage, measured in LCUs.
- Other items: reserved capacity or other features may appear as separate charges.
Use AWS’s guide to Elastic Load Balancing billing and usage codes to interpret the entries. Note the resource type, Region, usage code, and unit, then check whether the running-time charge and any LCU charge belong to the same ALB.
Check whether the ALB is genuinely no longer needed
Before removing anything, establish who owns the load balancer and what depends on it. In the EC2 console, inspect its listeners, target groups, registered targets, and tags. Check the domain’s DNS records and deployment configuration for references to the ALB, and confirm with the owning team that no active service, scheduled process, or planned deployment relies on it. These checks matter because load balancing routes requests to targets and monitors their health; a resource can be important even when it has little recent traffic. See What is Elastic Load Balancing?
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- If you cannot identify an owner or a dependency, pause and investigate rather than deleting it.
- If the ALB is being replaced, make the replacement available and verify that its destination works before changing DNS.
- If it is confirmed obsolete, move DNS and allow the change to propagate before deletion.
Move DNS before deleting the load balancer
AWS advises pointing the domain’s DNS record at its new destination and waiting for propagation before deleting the ALB. Its deletion guidance gives these minimum waits: at least 300 seconds for a CNAME with a 300-second TTL, or at least 60 seconds for a Route 53 Alias record. Allow for Route 53 propagation time as well. The appropriate wait depends on the record and its TTL; use the guidance in AWS’s Application Load Balancer deletion instructions.
Delete the ALB and check related resources separately
- Open the ALB in the EC2 console. Review its attributes and confirm the intended load balancer before making changes.
- Disable deletion protection if it is enabled. The ALB cannot be deleted while deletion protection is on. AWS documents the setting under editing Application Load Balancer attributes.
- Delete through the EC2 console or ELBv2 CLI. The CLI command is
aws elbv2 delete-load-balancer --load-balancer-arn <load-balancer-arn>. Replace the bracketed value with the ARN of the ALB you have verified. - Review remaining infrastructure independently. Deleting the ALB does not delete its registered targets or target groups. EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, and other associated resources may remain and can have their own costs. Remove only resources confirmed to be unnecessary.
- Reconcile billing afterward. Check a subsequent billing and usage report for the ALB’s running-time and capacity entries. Billing data may not update immediately, so do not treat a still-visible line item as proof that deletion failed.
AWS states that charges for the load balancer stop once it is deleted. That does not stop charges for resources that remain behind it. The console and CLI procedure, DNS guidance, and resource-retention notes are in AWS’s deletion documentation.
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What deletion does—and does not—stop charging for
Deleting a confirmed-obsolete ALB stops its own running-time charges after deletion; any ALB capacity charges should also be checked in the bill rather than assumed from a single line item. It does not terminate EC2 instances or remove target groups and registered targets. Those resources must be evaluated and cleaned up separately if they are no longer required.
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