How to Find Unused Elastic IPs in AWS

#devops #aws #cloud #tutorial

Unused Elastic IPs are one of the easiest AWS cost leaks to miss. They look
small, but they keep billing while they are allocated and not attached to a
running resource.

This guide shows how to find them safely.

What Is an Unused Elastic IP?

An Elastic IP is likely unused when it has no AssociationId.

That means AWS has allocated the public IP to your account, but it is not
currently associated with an EC2 instance, NAT gateway, network interface, or
other resource.

AWS CLI Command

Run this for one region:

aws ec2 describe-addresses \
  --region us-east-1 \
  --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].[AllocationId,PublicIp]' \
  --output table

Run it with a profile:

aws ec2 describe-addresses \
  --profile production \
  --region us-east-1 \
  --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].[AllocationId,PublicIp]' \
  --output table

Check All Regions

Elastic IPs are regional, so check every enabled region:

for region in $(aws ec2 describe-regions --query 'Regions[].RegionName' --output text); do
  echo "Region: $region"
  aws ec2 describe-addresses \
    --region "$region" \
    --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].[AllocationId,PublicIp]' \
    --output table
done