Since 2024, every public IPv4 is metered β even the ones you use.
At ~$3.60/month each, a fleet of public IPv4s is a real line item β idle or not. Share IPs behind load balancers and move to IPv6. If those IPs front a NAT, also check the NAT gateway cost calculator.
The Public IPv4 Address Cost Calculator converts a simple hourly rate into the real recurring bill for the public IPv4 addresses you hold. You enter two things: the number of public IPv4 addresses you have provisioned and the price per IP per hour your provider charges. From those, it projects the monthly and yearly cost. The main drivers are therefore the address count and the hourly rate β because the charge accrues per hour, even a fraction of a cent multiplies across every address and every hour of the year into a figure that is easy to overlook on a line-item invoice.
The practical point is that idle addresses cost the same as busy ones: a public IPv4 is billed for simply being allocated, whether or not it carries traffic. Use the yearly total to decide whether to release unused addresses, consolidate services behind fewer IPs, or move to IPv6 where practical. The key trade-off is that keeping spare addresses for convenience or failover has a standing price, so weigh that flexibility against the annual cost this calculator makes visible.
Yes. Since February 2024 every public IPv4 address is billed at about $0.005/hour (~$3.60/month) whether it is attached to a running instance or sitting idle. Previously only unattached Elastic IPs were charged; now all public IPv4 counts.
Release unused Elastic IPs, put instances behind a shared load balancer or NAT so fewer need public IPs, use private subnets with VPC endpoints, and adopt IPv6 where your stack supports it (IPv6 addresses are not charged the same way).
Cost at different volumes:
| Volume | Monthly | Yearly |
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