# Unassociated Elastic IP Address

Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/unassociated-elastic-ip-address

[Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) 

# Unassociated Elastic IP Address

## Explanation

Elastic IPs are often provisioned but forgotten - left unassociated, or still attached to EC2 instances that have been stopped. In either case, AWS treats the EIP as idle and applies an hourly charge. Although the cost per hour is relatively small, these charges accumulate quietly, especially across environments with frequent provisioning, decommissioning, or ephemeral workloads. Many organizations overlook the fact that even a single EIP attached to a stopped instance is billable. Without periodic review, this creates persistent, low-visibility waste across AWS accounts.

## Relevant Billing Model

Elastic IPs are billed under the following rules:

- Free: One Elastic IP actively associated with a running EC2 instance

- Billed hourly:

- If the EIP is unassociated (not linked to any resource)

- If the EIP is associated with a stopped EC2 instance

- If there is more than one EIP per instance

This pricing model is designed to discourage allocation of static IP addresses that are not in active use.

## Detection

List all Elastic IPs and identify those that:

- Are not associated with any resource

- Are associated with an EC2 instance that is currently stopped

- Are secondary EIPs beyond the first on any instance

- Use tags or resource metadata to validate whether these EIPs are still required for future use

## Remediation

- Release any EIPs that are no longer required

- Automate audits to identify unassociated or inactive EIPs on a recurring basis

- Update IaC templates or provisioning workflows to clean up networking assets during teardown

## Relevant Documentation

- [Amazon EC2 Elastic IP Pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/#Elastic_IP_Addresses\%22)

- [Working with Elastic IP Addresses](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/elastic-ip-addresses-eip.html/)

[Submit Feedback](https://hub.pointfive.co/inefficiencies/unassociated-elastic-ip-address)

## At a glance

Reference

CER-0110

Cloud provider

AWS

Service

AWS EIP

Category

[Networking](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/networking)

Inefficiency type

Unused Resource

## Contributed by

- Jason Eckle 

### Jason Eckle

Manager Cloud FinOps @ Etsy

[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoneckle/)

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Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.