NAT Gateway & Data Transfer Calculator
Model NAT gateway hours, per-GB processing, internet egress tiers and cross-AZ chatter together, then see what VPC endpoints, an AZ-local topology, or simply deleting an idle gateway would save.
- Region
- US East (N. Virginia)
- Currency
- USD
- Rate basis
- Public list price, no negotiated or committed discount
- Prices verified
- 4 Aug 2026
Each one fills every field below with a plausible shape for that workload. Change anything afterwards; nothing is locked.
- Charged whether traffic flows or not
- $98.55
- Removable with VPC endpoints
- $78.75/mo
- Cross-AZ transfer
- $40.00
$6,414.60 a year at these inputs.
| NAT gateway hours3 x $0.045/hr x 730 hrs, charged at zero traffic | $98.55 |
| NAT data processing5,000 GB x $0.045/GB | $225.00 |
| Internet egressTiered from $0.09/GB, after 100 GB free, stacks on top of NAT processing | $171.00 |
| Cross-AZ transferBoth directions at $0.01/GB, lands in EC2-Other on your bill | $40.00 |
| Total | $534.55 |
What would actually reduce it
Make the change
The endpoint saving on this page assumes a share of your NAT traffic is bound for AWS services. Measure that share first, then add the endpoints that carry it.
Top destinations by bytes, from VPC flow logs. Read-only, and it costs a Logs Insights scan. Run it before adding interface endpoints: they carry an hourly charge per zone and are a loss on traffic that turns out to be small.
# Which destinations your NAT traffic is actually going to, so the
# endpoint-eligible share on this page can be replaced with a measurement.
# VPC flow logs must already be enabled on the NAT gateway ENIs.
aws logs start-query \
--log-group-name /aws/vpc/flowlogs \
--start-time $(date -d '7 days ago' +%s) \
--end-time $(date +%s) \
--query-string 'fields dstAddr, bytes
| filter interfaceId like /eni-/
| stats sum(bytes) as total by dstAddr
| sort total desc
| limit 50'What this model assumes
- Internet traffic is charged twice, on purpose. Bytes leaving through a NAT gateway to the internet pay NAT processing and data transfer out. Calculators that charge one or the other understate this line by roughly half.
- Cross-AZ is billed in both directions by default, because AWS charges the sender and the receiver $0.01/GB each. This charge appears as “EC2-Other” on a bill and is routinely mistaken for compute.
- Interface VPC endpoints are not free. The endpoint saving shown above is gross, it removes NAT processing but adds the endpoint’s own hourly and per-GB charge, which we did not verify a rate for and therefore do not model. Gateway endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB genuinely are free, and that is where the saving is real.
- List prices, US East (N. Virginia). Data transfer rates vary by region and by destination; a private-pricing agreement changes the egress tiers but not the NAT rates.
- Data transfer and NAT gateway, source, read 4 Aug 2026
US East (N. Virginia) list prices, excluding any negotiated or committed-use discount. Your effective rate is lower if you have one.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my AWS NAT gateway so expensive?
Three charges stack. The gateway costs $0.045 an hour whether or not traffic flows, so three availability zones cost about $98 a month before a byte moves. Every GB through the gateway costs another $0.045, including traffic to S3 and other AWS services, not just the internet. And internet-bound bytes pay data transfer out on top of that. Most calculators model one of the three.
How much does a NAT gateway cost per month?
A single NAT gateway costs about $32.85 a month in hourly charges alone (730 hours at $0.045). Data processing at $0.045 per GB is added on top, so a gateway handling 1 TB a month costs roughly $78, and one handling 10 TB costs roughly $483.
Do VPC endpoints save money on NAT gateway charges?
Gateway endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB are free and remove that traffic from the NAT gateway entirely, an unambiguous saving. Interface endpoints for other services carry their own hourly and per-GB charge, so they only pay off above a break-even traffic volume. This calculator shows the gross saving and says explicitly that the interface-endpoint fee is not modelled.
How much does cross-AZ data transfer cost in AWS?
One cent per GB, charged in both directions, so a GB sent from an instance in one zone to an instance in another costs two cents in total. It appears on a bill under "EC2-Other" rather than as a named line, which is why it is routinely mistaken for compute and left unexamined.
Is a NAT instance cheaper than a NAT gateway?
On paper, often yes, a small EC2 instance costs less than $32.85 a month and has no per-GB processing charge. In practice you take on patching, failover, and a single point of failure, and the instance still pays data transfer out. It is a reasonable choice for a development account and a poor one for production.
Related tools
The questions this one tends to raise next.
Kubernetes Cost Calculator
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OpenCloudFront vs S3 Direct Calculator
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OpenEC2 Idle & Rightsizing Calculator
What idle instances cost, and what stopping them actually saves.
OpenEvery tool on this site that touches network and data transfer, across every cloud.
This prices one snapshot. The traffic moves every day.
Finitizer watches NAT processing, egress and cross-AZ transfer continuously across every account, attributes each charge to the workload causing it, and opens the Terraform PR for the endpoint or topology change. Read-only and keyless.