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LoadBalancerUsage and LCUUsage: what an ALB costs
LoadBalancerUsage is the hourly charge for each Application Load Balancer that exists ($0.0225 per hour in US East N. Virginia, about $16.43 for a 730-hour month), and LCUUsage is the extra charge for the capacity it actually uses ($0.008 per LCU-hour).
In your bill the usage type reads: LoadBalancerUsage, USE1-LoadBalancerUsage, LCUUsage, USE1-LCUUsage
What it costs
| Charge | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Application Load Balancer, per hour it exists | $0.0225 | per hour |
| Application Load Balancer capacity | $0.008 | per LCU-hour |
| Network Load Balancer, per hour / per NLCU-hour | $0.0225 / $0.006 | per hour |
| Classic Load Balancer, per hour | $0.025 | per hour |
US East (N. Virginia); other regions differ. Checked 2026-11-04. Sources: AWS Elastic Load Balancing pricing, AWS price list file, ELB, us-east-1.
Example with made-up numbers
9 ALBs, one per environment and service, each up 730 hours: 9 x 730 x $0.0225 = $147.83 on LoadBalancerUsage
At an average of 2 LCUs each: 9 x 730 x 2 x $0.008 = $105.12 on LCUUsage
If 5 of the 9 carry no traffic, they still cost 5 x 730 x $0.0225 = $82.13 per month in hourly charges
Typical causes
One load balancer per service or environment
Every ALB bills its hourly charge whether or not it carries traffic. Many small services with their own ALB multiply the fixed cost.
Leftover load balancers
Staging, preview and demo environments whose instances are gone but whose load balancers remain.
Kubernetes Ingress and Service objects
Each Ingress or LoadBalancer-type Service can create a separate load balancer unless you share one through an ingress group.
High LCU use from long connections or many rules
LCUs are measured on the highest of several dimensions (new connections, active connections, bytes, rule evaluations), so a busy dimension drives the LCUUsage line.
The fix, step by step
Verify first
Check these before you change anything: the steps below are suggestions, and only you can see your own configuration.
- For each load balancer check its request count and processed bytes in CloudWatch (RequestCount, ProcessedBytes) over the last 14 days before treating it as unused.
- Check what points at it: DNS records, CloudFront origins, target groups with registered targets. Deleting a load balancer breaks anything still using its DNS name.
- Confirm the LCU dimensions from AWS's pricing page for your load balancer type before attributing LCUUsage to one cause.
- If you consolidate several services onto one ALB, check that listener rules, certificates and security groups still match what each service expects.
In the console
- EC2 console > Load Balancers; sort by creation date and read each name and tags.
- Open a candidate > Monitoring tab; look at Request count and Processed bytes for 2 weeks.
- Target groups tab: confirm registered targets are healthy or absent.
- For true leftovers: take note of the DNS name, remove the DNS record first, wait a few days, then Actions > Delete load balancer.
- To consolidate: add host- or path-based listener rules on one ALB and point the services' target groups at it.
With the CLI
aws elbv2 describe-load-balancers --query 'LoadBalancers[].[LoadBalancerName,Type,CreatedTime,DNSName]' --output table
aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics --namespace AWS/ApplicationELB --metric-name RequestCount --dimensions Name=LoadBalancer,Value=app/EXAMPLE/EXAMPLEID --start-time 2026-10-20T00:00:00Z --end-time 2026-11-03T00:00:00Z --period 86400 --statistics Sum
aws elbv2 delete-load-balancer --load-balancer-arn arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:us-east-1:111122223333:loadbalancer/app/EXAMPLE/EXAMPLEID
Rollback
A deleted load balancer cannot be restored with the same DNS name. Recreate it from your infrastructure-as-code or console settings; record listeners, rules and target groups before deleting.
Find your load balancer lines in your own bill
Drop in your Cost Explorer or CUR CSV. Billtrim reads it in your browser, finds the LoadBalancerUsage and LCUUsage lines and shows the dollars and steps for your numbers.
Paste your export: how to export a Cost Explorer CSV or CUR file in two minutes.
Questions people ask
Does an ALB with no traffic still cost money?
Yes. The hourly charge applies for every hour the load balancer exists ($0.0225 per hour in US East N. Virginia). LCU charges depend on use.
What is an LCU?
A Load Balancer Capacity Unit: AWS measures new connections, active connections, processed bytes and rule evaluations and bills on the highest one. See the Elastic Load Balancing pricing page for the exact definitions.
Is a Network Load Balancer cheaper?
Its hourly price is the same $0.0225 in US East N. Virginia and its capacity unit is $0.006 per NLCU-hour, but it works at a different layer, so check that it fits the service.
Related
- NatGateway-Hours: the fixed monthly cost of each NAT gateway
- PublicIPv4:InUseAddress and IdleAddress: the public IP address charge
Part of the guide: Why is my AWS bill so high? Check these 8 line items first