# Unassociated Elastic IP

> Since 2024 AWS charges for every allocated public IPv4 address, so an Elastic IP attached to nothing costs about $3.65 a month for doing nothing. ZopNight reports the full cost as recoverable. Releasing one is permanent: you cannot reclaim that address.

Source: https://zop.dev/integrations/aws/recommendations/unassociated-elastic-ip
Updated: 2026-08-19

---

## The charge that changed in 2024

Elastic IPs used to be free while associated with a running instance, and only billed when idle.
Since February 2024 AWS [charges for every in-use public IPv4 address](https://aws.amazon.com/vpc/pricing/), associated or not. The
idle ones were always billable; now they are simply more visible against a larger baseline.

At roughly $3.65 per address per month, a handful is noise and a few hundred is a real line
nobody has ever seen itemised.

## Release is irreversible, and that matters

You cannot get a specific Elastic IP back once released. It returns to the AWS pool and may be
allocated to another account within minutes.

That has practical consequences worth checking before acting:

- **Firewall allowlists.** If a partner or customer has allowlisted that address, releasing it
  breaks the integration and you cannot undo it.
- **DNS records.** An A record pointing at a released address will eventually point at somebody
  else's infrastructure.
- **Documentation and runbooks.** Addresses get written down in places that are not
  infrastructure-as-code.

This is why the rule is rated `low` despite a clean, fully-recoverable saving. The dollars are
certain; the blast radius of getting it wrong is not.

## Listing addresses with no AssociationId

```bash
aws ec2 describe-addresses \
  --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].[PublicIp,AllocationId,Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value|[0]]' \
  --output table
```

Anything returned is allocated and attached to nothing.

## Distinguishing genuinely spare from forgotten

An address held deliberately for an upcoming migration looks identical to one orphaned by a
terminated instance. Tagging the intentional ones is the only durable fix. Without it, the same
addresses reappear on this list every month and get re-investigated each time.