Why am I seeing charges for 'Public IPv4 addresses' when I am under the AWS free tier?

What's New

Effective February 1, 2024, there will be a charge of $0.005 per IP per hour for all public IPv4 addresses, whether attached to a service or not (there is already a charge for public IPv4 addresses you allocate in your account but don’t attach to an EC2 instance).

The AWS Free Tier for EC2 will include 750 hours of public IPv4 address usage per month for the first 12 months, effective February 1, 2024. You will not be charged for IP addresses that you own and bring to AWS using Amazon BYOIP.

IMPORTANT NOTE : 750 hours of public IPv4 address usage per month is only Free when you are using the Public IP with EC2 service and your AWS Account is under Free tier. If you are using Public IP with any other service than EC2 or Free Tier is expired on the account, then a charge of $0.005 per IP per hour will be present on the account.

How to identify the root cause?

1st method - Usage Report :

You can download the Usage Report using the steps mentioned :

1. Sign in to the Billing and Cost Management console
2. In the navigation pane, choose Cost & Usage Reports.
3. Under the AWS Usage Report section, choose Create a Usage Report.
4. On the Download usage report page, under Services, choose - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
5. Choose the Usage type - All
6. Choose the Operation - All
7. Choose the Time period for the report. If you choose Custom date range, you need to specify the Date range for the report manually.
8. Under, Report granularity, choose Hourly.
9. Choose Download, and then choose CSV Report.

Once you download the CSV report, Open it and add a filter to the column - 'Operation' by doing this, you will be able to see all the operations related to 'Public IPv4 addresses'

OR You can use Cost and Usage Report (CUR)

By default, your Cost and Usage Report (CUR) includes comprehensive usage data related to both in-use and idle public IPv4 addresses. When you set up CUR, you have the option of selecting Include Resource IDs to add more detailed resource level analysis.

Please refer, Section - Estimating public IPv4 address charges mentioned in the below AWS document :

Identify and optimize public IPv4 address usage on AWS

Please refer to the below information to understand for which resources, you have received the charges on the Account

• AllocateAddressVPC: tracks Elastic IP addresses that are idle in your AWS account.- Not included in AWS Free Tier.
• AssociateAddressVPC: tracks Elastic IP addresses that are in-use and associated with your AWS resources.- Included in 750 hours Free if under AWS Free Tier and if in use with EC2, If used with other services, charge will be there.
• RunInstances: tracks all EC2 public IPv4 addresses associated with your AWS resources in VPCs -Included in 750 hours Free if under AWS Free Tier.
• DescribeNetworkInterfaces: tracks service managed public IPv4 addresses in VPCs-Not included in AWS Free Tier.
• CreateVpnConnection: tracks public IPv4 addresses associated with AWS Site-to-Site VPN connections - Not included in AWS Free Tier.
• CreateAccelerator: tracks public IPv4 addresses associated with AWS Global Accelerator accelerators - Not included in AWS Free Tier.

Example Usage Report

In the above report, If the usage value shows greater than 1, that means there are multiple Public IPs active.

Example - Please look at the 'row 1', Operation - DescribeNetworkInterfaces

• Time frame - 03/07/24 15:00 to 03/07/24 16:00 = 1 hour
• If there is only 1 Public IP / ENI, it will show usage value as 1.
• But, in this Report, From 03/07/24 15:00 to 03/07/24 16:00 the usage value for DescribeNetworkInterfaces is 6.
• This indicates, there are 6 Active ENIs that means 6 Public IPs are in use.

PLEASE NOTE - AWS tracks four types of public IPv4 addresses: Amazon EC2 public IPv4 addresses, Amazon-owned Elastic IP addresses, service managed public IPv4 addresses, and Bring Your Own IPs (BYOIP). The new charges apply to all public IPv4 address types—except BYOIP.

Before deleting resources on the AWS Account to avoid charges, Please review - View public IP insights

Please refer to the below-mentioned sections in this AWS Document - Identify and optimize public IPv4 address usage on AWS

• Types of AWS public IPv4 addresses
• Best practices for Public IPv4 usage optimization

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If you are sure and do not require these resources , you can delete the same.

📌 Mostly the charges will be for DescribeNetworkInterfaces that is Network interfaces, You can delete it by following the below AWS Documentation Delete a network interface - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-eni.html#delete_eni

NOTE - You cannot delete a network interface that is in use. First, you must detach the network interface.

If you get any error, please refer to below-

• Select the network interface and choose the Details tab.
• Review the Description to see which resources the network interface is attached to.
• Delete that resource - For example, deleting a Network Interface and the Requester ID is amazon-elb. Use the value in the Description field of the Elastic Network Interface to identify the load balancer. Then, navigate to the Load Balancer section of the Amazon EC2 console, locate the load balancer, and delete it

** If you are facing any issues while deleting, please contact AWS Support with the details and screenshot of the issue.

📌 If the usage is for AllocateAddressVPC , then please refer - Release an Elastic IP address

📌 If the usage is for CreateVpnConnection , then please refer - Delete a Site-to-Site VPN connection

📌 If the usage is for CreateAccelerator , then please refer - Deleting an accelerator

2nd method - Public IP Insights :

In order to make it easier for you to monitor, analyze, and audit your use of public IPv4 addresses, AWS has launched Public IP Insights, a new feature of Amazon VPC IP Address Manager that is available to you at no cost. In addition to helping you to make efficient use of public IPv4 addresses, Public IP Insights will give you a better understanding of your security profile. You can see the breakdown of public IP types and EIP usage, with multiple filtering options.

NOTE: You need to create an Amazon VPC IPAM to use Public IP Insights. You are not charged for using Amazon VPC IPAM when you are only using Public IP Insights as a part of VPC IPAM Free Tier.

For more information, please refer - Identify and optimize public IPv4 address usage on AWS

Related-

New – AWS Public IPv4 Address Charge + Public IP Insights

Identify and optimize public IPv4 address usage on AWS