An AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) can cost about $16.20 per 30-day month in running-time charges alone at the $0.0225-per-hour rate shown for US-East-1. That is an illustrative baseline, not a universal or all-in price: Region, Application Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) usage and other billable items can change the total. AWS bills for each hour or partial hour the ALB runs, even when traffic is low. Before deleting one, confirm it is genuinely obsolete, move any DNS traffic to its replacement, and check dependent resources separately.
Why does an idle load balancer still cost money?
A load balancer is a running AWS resource, not a pay-only-when-used service. AWS charges for each hour or partial hour an ALB runs. The AWS pricing page lists a $0.0225-per-ALB-hour example for US-East-1; multiplied by 24 hours and 30 days, that is $16.20 in base running-time charges. AWS also shows an example rate of $0.008 per LCU-hour. These are examples, not a guaranteed current price for every Region or account. Check the AWS Elastic Load Balancing pricing page for the relevant Region and metered usage.
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Low traffic may reduce usage-based charges, but it does not stop the running-time meter. Nor does a quiet monitoring period prove that the load balancer is unneeded: it may serve occasional, seasonal, internal or failover traffic. Treat low usage as a reason to investigate, not as permission to delete.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsHow can you tell what the charge is for?
Start with the bill or billing and usage report rather than guessing from a monthly total. AWS identifies load-balancer charges using usage codes and units. For an ALB, running time and capacity usage appear as different items:
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| Billing item | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
LoadBalancerUsage |
Load balancer running time | Hours |
LCUUsage |
Application Load Balancer Capacity Unit usage | LCUs |
Reserved capacity or other features can appear as separate bill items. Use the Region, usage code and unit to distinguish the ALB’s running-time charge from capacity usage and other Elastic Load Balancing costs. AWS documents the meter names in Understand codes for Elastic Load Balancing in billing and usage reports.
What should you check before deleting an ALB?
Elastic Load Balancing routes requests to targets and monitors their health. Removing an ALB can therefore interrupt an application even if its recent traffic looks negligible. Before acting, inspect its configuration and establish who owns it and what depends on it.
- Identify the owning team or application from tags, deployment records or your internal service inventory.
- Review listeners, rules, target groups and registered targets in the EC2 console.
- Check DNS records and active deployment configuration for references to the ALB.
- Look for dependencies such as scheduled jobs, infrequent users, internal services or failover paths that might not show steady traffic.
- Use relevant CloudWatch metrics alongside traffic and application-owner checks; metrics can inform the decision but do not by themselves establish that deletion is safe. See CloudWatch metrics for your Application Load Balancer.
AWS describes the service’s routing and health-monitoring role in What is Elastic Load Balancing?
How do you delete an unused ALB without breaking DNS?
If the domain will use a new destination, update its DNS record first and allow the change to propagate before deleting the old load balancer. AWS gives minimum wait guidance based on the record type: at least 300 seconds for a CNAME with a 300-second TTL, and at least 60 seconds for a Route 53 Alias record, while accounting for Route 53 propagation time. Actual DNS caching and propagation can vary, so verify the new destination is working before removal.
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- Inspect the load balancer. In the AWS Management Console, open EC2 and review the load balancer’s listeners, target groups, targets, attributes and tags. Confirm its owner and dependencies.
- Redirect DNS if replacing it. Change the domain’s record to the new destination, then wait for the applicable TTL and propagation before proceeding.
- Turn off deletion protection if it is enabled. In the EC2 console, edit the ALB attributes and disable deletion protection. AWS documents this setting in Edit attributes for your Application Load Balancer.
- Delete the load balancer. Use the EC2 console’s load balancer deletion action, or run
aws elbv2 delete-load-balancer --load-balancer-arn <load-balancer-arn>with the ARN of the ALB you intend to remove. AWS’s procedure is documented in Delete an Application Load Balancer.
AWS states that charges for the load balancer stop once it is deleted. That does not mean every related charge ends: deletion does not remove its target groups or registered targets.
Will deleting the ALB stop charges for its EC2 instances?
No. Deleting the load balancer does not delete its registered targets or target groups. EC2 instances continue running, and containers, IP addresses and other resources may also remain. Review each separately, confirm whether it is still needed, and remove it through its own supported workflow only when safe. Otherwise, its own charges can continue independently of the ALB.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should you verify the cleanup?
After deletion, check the billing and usage report again to confirm that the ALB’s running-time usage has stopped. Billing data may not update immediately, so a charge still visible shortly after deletion is not by itself proof that the resource remains. Reconcile the report over time and investigate any continuing load-balancer usage alongside other surviving resources and separately metered features.
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