Zombie spend, quantified
How much are idle AWS resources costing you every month?
Turn orphaned volumes, idle networking, and forgotten snapshots into a ranked dollar figure — then fix the top drivers this week. us-east-1 list pricing.
- No signup
- Instant results
- ~2 min
Rates reviewed
Storage waste
us-east-1list rates, pricing as of 2026-10-17. Source: AWS public pricing.
Unattached EBS and old snapshots are the most common silent line items. Enter what you can see in the console or Cost Explorer.
Sum of volumes with zero attachments.
Snapshots past your retention policy (often 90+ days).
Stopped instances still bill for allocated storage.
Networking & IPs
Idle load balancers and NAT Gateways bill hourly even with near-zero traffic.
LBs with negligible request/LCU metrics for 30+ days.
NAT Gateways with near-zero BytesOutToDestination.
Public IPv4 addresses not attached to a running resource — $0.005/hr each.
Your Estimated Idle Waste
Waste categories
Estimated Monthly Waste
live resultCost Breakdown
Ranked line items and fix-this-week list unlock after email
Get the Full Waste Breakdown
Ranked dollar drivers plus a fix-this-week checklist — emailed to you.
Waste breakdown unlocked!
Line items and remediation steps below.
Ranked Line Items
Fix this week
Want this applied to your real account?
Idle resources are usually the first 10–20% of a cost audit. We inventory orphaned EBS, idle NAT/ELB, and untagged spend against CUR — then hand you a sequenced cleanup. Typical AWS cost reviews cut spend 20–40%.
Book a Free Cost Audit →Who This Tool Is For
FinOps practitioners and platform engineers who know waste exists but need a dollar figure before scheduling cleanup sprints.
Why We Built This Tool
Hourly networking and forgotten storage keep billing whether traffic is zero or not. This calculator turns console counts into a monthly waste total using us-east-1 list rates as of 2026-10-17.
What Problem It Solves
- Invisible line items. Unattached EBS and idle NAT rarely show up in “top services” until you look.
- Prioritization. Rank drivers so the team fixes the biggest dollars first.
- Public IPv4 tax. Unassociated addresses bill $0.005/hr — easy wins.
- Stopped ≠ free. RDS storage keeps charging after stop.
Pair with the Cost Waste Quiz or book an AWS cost audit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as an idle load balancer?
A load balancer that remains provisioned while request count and LCU usage stay near zero for weeks. You still pay the hourly charge (and any residual LCU). This tool models the hourly floor only.
Are unattached EBS snapshots included?
Yes — enter snapshot storage GB separately from unattached volumes. Snapshot storage is billed per GB-month even when the source volume is gone.
Why are public IPv4 addresses so expensive when idle?
AWS bills public IPv4 addresses hourly whether associated or not (with limited free-tier exceptions). Unassociated Elastic IPs are a common cleanup win at $0.005/hour each in us-east-1.
Does a stopped RDS instance stop billing?
Instance hours pause when stopped (with time limits), but allocated storage and backups continue. Enter the allocated storage GB to estimate that residual cost.
How accurate is this estimate?
Arithmetic uses published us-east-1 list rates as of 2026-10-17. It excludes multi-AZ premiums, provisioned IOPS, and data-processing fees on busy NAT Gateways.
What should I delete first?
Sort by monthly dollars. Usually old snapshots and unattached volumes lead; then idle NAT/ELB; then unassociated IPv4. Always snapshot before irreversible deletes.
