AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB) Hidden Costs 2026
What they don't show you on the pricing page
AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB) costs $0.02 to $0.02 per per month (varies by usage) as of May 2026. Pricing depends on your chosen tier, contract length, and negotiated discounts.
Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.
- Free tier: No free tier available
AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB) true cost runs 70% above the listed $0.0225-$0.0225/per month (varies by usage) price as of May 2026. For a 25-person team, expect ~$11 in year-one costs vs the $6.75 base license. Key hidden costs: load balancer capacity units (lcu) charged per dimension: new connections, active connections, processed bytes, rule evaluations, lcu costs vary by region (typically $0.008 per lcu-hour in us regions), data transfer charges for traffic processed through load balancer. Verified from 1 sources by CostBench.
Example: True Cost for 25 Users
| License (25 × $0.0225 × 12) | $6.75/yr |
| Implementation (one-time) | +$15,000–$50,000 |
| Premium Support (20%) | +$1/yr |
| Training (25 × $500) | +$12,500 |
| Admin (part-time) | +$15,000–$25,000/yr |
| Estimated Year 1 Total | ~$11 |