Plug in your traffic volume, AZ count, and region. See the hourly idle cost plus the per-GB data-processing fee that creates surprise bills. Compare against a NAT Instance for low-traffic workloads. Browser-only math, no signup, rates as of 2026-05.
Your projected annual NAT spend
$842/yr
2 AZs in us-east-1 with 100 GB/mo of traffic.
Your NAT Gateway usage
Scenarios
Current setup
$0/mo
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50% less traffic
$0/mo
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Single AZ
$0/mo
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NAT Gateway vs NAT Instance (single AZ)
NAT Gateway (1 AZ)
$0/mo
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NAT Instance (t4g.nano)
$0/mo
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NAT Instance pricing excludes the AWS data-transfer-out fee, which still applies. Multi-AZ HA with NAT Instances requires custom failover scripting — production workloads usually justify the NAT Gateway premium.
List-price math only. Real bills can be cut 30 to 70 percent with VPC Gateway Endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB. The deep audit models your actual VPC Flow Logs and identifies which traffic to route around NAT.
Monthly cost breakdown
Detailed line-items for your current configuration.
Line item
Math
Monthly
Hourly fixed (idle)
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Data processing
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Total per month
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Published NAT Gateway rates by region (2026-05)
Source: aws.amazon.com/vpc/pricing — verify before committing to a Reserved Instance plan.
Region
Per Gateway-hour
Per GB processed
1-AZ monthly idle
us-east-1, us-west-2
$0.045
$0.045
$32.85
eu-west-1
$0.048
$0.048
$35.04
ap-southeast-1
$0.059
$0.059
$43.07
ap-northeast-1
$0.062
$0.062
$45.26
Free download
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One-page checklist of the biggest NAT cost-saving levers — VPC Gateway Endpoints, Interface Endpoint candidates, single-AZ for non-prod, S3 traffic patterns to watch, and the EKS-specific gotchas. PDF sent to your inbox.
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When NAT is only the start of the bill
Get the LLM Bill Triage Deep Report
One-shot $299 audit of your real cloud spend. We started with LLM API bills and now extend the same line-by-line method to AWS NAT, data-transfer-out, idle EBS, and orphan ENIs. 30-day driver scan, savings ranked by effort. PDF in 24 hours. Money-back if total identified monthly savings is under $299.
Example: 2 NAT Gateways in us-east-1 with 100 GB of monthly traffic = (2 × 730 × $0.045) + (100 × $0.045) = $65.70 + $4.50 = $70.20 per month. The hourly idle alone is $65.70 before a single byte moves — multi-AZ deployments are where most surprise bills start.
Scale that to 5,000 GB per month and the same 2-AZ setup becomes $65.70 + $225.00 = $290.70 per month. The per-GB fee is the half of the bill that compounds with traffic, and it stacks on top of the normal AWS data-transfer-out charge. That double-charge is the structural reason NAT bills overshoot forecasts.
What this calculator doesn't model
Data transfer out — AWS still charges the standard $0.09 per GB egress to the internet on top of the NAT processing fee. For S3 and DynamoDB-heavy traffic, route through a VPC Gateway Endpoint to remove both fees.
Cross-AZ data charges — If your NAT Gateway is in a different AZ from your workload, you pay $0.01 per GB for cross-AZ traffic. Multi-AZ NAT eliminates this but doubles the hourly idle.
VPC Endpoint costs — Interface Endpoints (PrivateLink) cost $0.01 per hour per endpoint per AZ plus $0.01 per GB. Often worth it for ECR, Secrets Manager, and SQS. Gateway Endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB are free.
Reserved Instance / Savings Plan — NAT Gateway hourly is not covered by EC2 Savings Plans. There is no discount for committed usage; the only lever is reducing hours or traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
What AWS NAT Gateway rates does this calculator use?
Published per-hour and per-GB rates from aws.amazon.com/vpc/pricing. us-east-1 / us-west-2: $0.045 per gateway-hour and $0.045 per GB processed. eu-west-1: $0.048 / $0.048. ap-southeast-1: $0.059 / $0.059. ap-northeast-1 and other high-cost regions: up to $0.062 / $0.062. AWS occasionally updates these — always cross-check before signing a Reserved Instance or Savings Plan.
Why is NAT Gateway one of the most common surprise bills in AWS?
Two reasons. The per-GB processing fee stacks on top of the normal data-transfer-out fee, so egress through NAT is billed twice. And multi-AZ deployments quietly double or triple the idle hourly cost — a 3-AZ setup is $98.55 per month before any traffic. Teams notice the $33 idle for one AZ then get blindsided when traffic scales to 5 TB and the bill jumps by $230 in data processing alone.
When does a NAT Instance beat a NAT Gateway on price?
A t4g.nano NAT Instance costs about $3.07 per month plus $3.65 for the Elastic IP, so roughly $6.72 fixed. Bandwidth out is billed at standard data-transfer rates without the $0.045-per-GB NAT processing fee. Break-even on single-AZ is around 130 GB monthly — below that, NAT Instance wins. Above 500 GB, NAT Gateway is usually right because the instance becomes a CPU bottleneck. Multi-AZ HA is the dealbreaker for production.
What are the top ways to actually cut a NAT Gateway bill?
Route S3 and DynamoDB through a VPC Gateway Endpoint — free, removes 30 to 70 percent of NAT traffic at most data-heavy shops. Add VPC Interface Endpoints for chatty AWS services (ECR, Secrets Manager, SQS). For non-production, run single-AZ to halve the hourly idle. For very low-traffic dev environments, replace with a NAT Instance. On EKS, look at IPv6-only or PrivateLink patterns that bypass NAT entirely.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. Traffic volumes, AZ counts, and rate math run locally in your browser. The page fires an anonymous pageview beacon and CTA-click events so we can measure whether the calculator is useful — no inputs, no email (unless you submit one to the cheat-sheet form), no IP stored raw.