Elastic Load Balancing's free allowance is an intro tier: new accounts get a larger allowance that steps down to a smaller permanent free tier after the intro period.
About
Elastic Load Balancing is an AWS networking service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets and Availability Zones. It is designed to improve application scalability, availability, and resilience while helping teams secure and monitor traffic in real time.
The service supports multiple load balancer types to fit different architectures, including Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, Gateway Load Balancer, and Classic Load Balancer. It is commonly used to modernize container and serverless applications, scale hybrid cloud traffic, and preserve existing network appliance deployments.
- Automatically routes traffic across multiple targets and Availability Zones
- Supports application, network, gateway, and classic load balancing
- Includes SSL/TLS termination and certificate management
- Helps maintain high availability and automatic scaling
- Provides real-time health and performance monitoring
Free Tier Value
This free tier is a capped monthly allowance, not an uncapped forever-free offer, and AWS says new customers also get up to $200 in Free Tier credits starting July 15, 2025. Using the published paid rates, the included 750 hours of load balancer time plus the Classic and Application usage quotas are worth about $8.62/month, so the free tier is roughly equivalent to a small paid spend at AWS list prices.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- Up to 750 hours per month shared between Classic and Application Load Balancers.
- Up to 15 GB of data processing for Classic Load Balancers.
- Up to 15 LCUs for Application Load Balancers.
See Elastic Load Balancing pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Application Load Balancer
- ALB-hour
- $0.0225 per hour
- LCU-hour
- $0.008 per LCU-hour
- LCU dimensions
- 25 new connections/sec; 3,000 active connections/min; 1 GB/hour processed bytes; 1,000 rule evals/sec
- Hourly charge for each Application Load Balancer running
- Additional charge for Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCUs) used per minute
- Supports high availability and automatic scaling
- Load Balancer Capacity Unit Reservation available
Network Load Balancer
- NLB-hour
- $0.0225 per hour
- NLCU-hour
- $0.006 per NLCU-hour
- Hourly charge for each Network Load Balancer running
- Additional charge for Network Load Balancer Capacity Units (NLCUs) used per minute
- Supports high availability and automatic scaling
- Load Balancer Capacity Unit Reservation available
Gateway Load Balancer
- GWLB-hour
- $0.0225 per hour
- GLCU-hour
- $0.0035 per GLCU-hour
- Hourly charge for each Gateway Load Balancer running
- Additional charge for Gateway Load Balancer Capacity Units (GLCUs) used per minute
- Supports high availability and automatic scaling
- Gateway Load Balancer Endpoint billed separately
Classic Load Balancer
- load balancer-hour
- $0.0225 per hour
- data processed
- $0.008 per GB
- Hourly charge for each Classic Load Balancer running
- Charge for each GB of data transferred through the load balancer
- Supports high availability and automatic scaling
- Standard AWS data transfer and public IPv4 charges apply separately
Pricing extracted from Elastic Load Balancing's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Elastic Load Balancing free forever?
Partly. Elastic Load Balancing gives new accounts a larger allowance at first, which then steps down to a smaller permanent free tier.
What happens when you exceed Elastic Load Balancing's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. Elastic Load Balancing's cheapest paid plan is Application Load Balancer at $16.2 / month.
What is Elastic Load Balancing's free tier worth?
Elastic Load Balancing's free tier is worth about $8.62 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 41/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.