NAT Gateway has zero outbound traffic for 7 days
- Severity
- High
- Service
- VPC
- Check ID
- NAT_UNUSED
What this check finds
A NAT Gateway with no outbound bytes over 7 days is likely unused, yet incurs the base hourly charge of ~$0.045/hr ($32.85/month) plus data processing charges. Unused NAT Gateways commonly remain after workloads are migrated, deleted, or moved to a different subnet or VPC.
Passing looks like: No unused NAT Gateways.
How to fix it
Delete the NAT Gateway if it is no longer needed.
AWS CLI
aws ec2 delete-nat-gateway --nat-gateway-id NAT_GATEWAY_IDRelease the associated Elastic IP to avoid further charges:
aws ec2 release-address --allocation-id ALLOCATION_ID
Names in capitals are placeholders for your own resource. Review a command before you run it.
AWS console
VPC → NAT gateways → select → Actions → Delete NAT gateway.
Compliance
This is a cost check. It flags spend that buys nothing, which no compliance framework asks about, so it is not mapped to a control.
Checked on every scan
KloudLytics runs this check each time it scans a connected AWS account, through a read-only role, and lists every affected resource with its region. On Pro and Business a fix is written for the specific resource rather than the general case above. The exact access it needs