AWS NAT Gateway pricing calculator
Estimate AWS NAT Gateway Costs. Estimate your costs using AWS list prices.
Estimates from AWS list prices, not an AWS quote. Discounts, taxes and credit terms may affect your bill.
01 · How AWS NAT Gateway pricing works
What you pay for
- Per NAT gateway hour ($0.045 in us-east-1), from creation to deletion.
- Per GB processed ($0.045), in both directions, regardless of destination.
- Normal data transfer charges on top (internet egress, cross-AZ when instances use a NAT in another AZ).
- Public IPv4 address on each public NAT gateway.
Common cost traps
- Traffic to S3 and DynamoDB through NAT pays $0.045/GB that a free gateway endpoint avoids.
- Pulling container images and OS updates through NAT adds processing on every deploy.
- Instances using a NAT gateway in another AZ pay cross-AZ transfer as well.
- Each NAT gateway costs about $32.85/month idle; one per AZ per VPC multiplies quickly.
Ways to reduce cost
- Add S3/DynamoDB gateway endpoints and interface endpoints for heavy AWS API traffic (ECR, CloudWatch, STS).
- Use one NAT per AZ only in production; share or centralise NAT for small environments.
- Use IPv6 with an egress-only internet gateway (free) where supported.
- Cache packages and images inside the VPC.
Free Tier & account eligibility
Free Tier depends on account age. Accounts created on or after 15 July 2025 get a $100 sign-up credit plus up to $100 more for completing onboarding activities; on the Free plan these last 6 months (or until used up), on the Paid plan unused Free Tier credits stay usable for 12 months from sign-up. Accounts created before 15 July 2025 keep the legacy Free Tier (12-month offers plus always-free offers). Always-free offers apply on both plans. No Free Tier for NAT gateways on any plan; new-plan accounts can pay from Free Tier credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS NAT Gateway?
NAT gateway hours and data processing, plus the related data transfer, are eligible usage and are offset by credits. General rules: credits only offset charges from the billing cycle in which they were applied onward (never past bills), they apply only to the services listed on the credit in Billing and Cost Management > Credits, they expire on the date shown there, and accounts on the AWS Free plan cannot receive Activate credits until they upgrade to the Paid plan.
Check my creditsExcluded charges & conditions
- Upfront payments for Savings Plans and Reserved Instances (All Upfront, and the upfront part of Partial Upfront). The recurring hourly fee of a No Upfront commitment is billed as normal usage and can be offset.
- AWS Marketplace charges (Activate credits make an exception for third-party foundation models used through Amazon Bedrock).
- AWS Enterprise Support, Enterprise On-Ramp, Unified Operations, resold support and partner-led support.
- Amazon Route 53 domain name registration and transfer fees.
- Taxes (sales, use, VAT and similar), AWS Professional Services, Training and Certification, Mechanical Turk, AWS Managed Services, and any use for cryptocurrency mining.
Illustrative credit runway
Single-service examples from the supplied data, not your calculator result. Months = credit amount ÷ monthly cost, before credit expiry. Credits can expire before these theoretical months are used; coverage and other AWS services can shorten runway.
| Usage profile | Monthly estimate | $10,000 | $25,000 | $100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | $37.35 | 267.7 mo. | 669.3 mo. | 2,677.4 mo. |
| Medium | $236.79 | 42.2 mo. | 105.6 mo. | 422.3 mo. |
| Large | $2,040.30 | 4.9 mo. | 12.3 mo. | 49.0 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
1 NAT gateway 24/7, 100 GB processed | NAT gateway hours: 730 hours x $0.045 = $32.85; Data processed: 100 GB x $0.045 = $4.50 | Total ~$37.35/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
3 NAT gateways (one per AZ), 3 TB processed | NAT gateway hours: 2,190 hours x $0.045 = $98.55; Data processed: 3,072 GB x $0.045 = $138.24 | Total ~$236.79/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
6 NAT gateways (2 VPCs x 3 AZs), 40 TB processed | NAT gateway hours: 4,380 hours x $0.045 = $197.10; Data processed: 40,960 GB x $0.045 = $1,843.20 | Total ~$2,040.30/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS NAT Gateway pricing FAQ
Why is my NAT bill so high?
Every GB through the gateway costs $0.045 on top of normal transfer. Large S3 downloads, image pulls and log shipping through NAT are the usual causes.
Do gateway endpoints really avoid NAT charges?
Yes for S3 and DynamoDB in the same Region: gateway endpoints are free and route that traffic without the NAT gateway.
Is there a free tier for NAT gateways?
No. NAT gateways are billed from the first hour on every plan.
Do credits cover NAT gateways?
Yes, NAT hours and processing are eligible usage.
05 · Sources & estimate notes
Content pack dated 2026-10-19. Calculator rates remain their existing snapshots; this content update is not a price refresh.