Idle load balancers: the ~$16/month each you forgot to delete"

Idle load balancers can cost around $16 per month, even when they receive no traffic, due to their fixed hourly charge. These dormant load balancers often persist in environments because they're typically created early in the application development process and rarely deleted. To identify and remove these unnecessary resources, follow these steps:

1. List all load balancers and their traffic. Use AWS CLI command `aws elbv2 describe-load-balancers` to retrieve a table of load balancer names, types, and ARNs. For Application Load Balancers, check the request volume over the past week using CloudWatch's `get-metric-statistics` command. Compare the sum of RequestCount against near-zero values to spot idle ALBs.

2. Verify that the load balancer's target groups are either empty or contain only unhealthy targets. With the ARN of the load balancer, use `aws elbv2 describe-target-groups` to list target group ARNs. Then, call `aws elbv2 describe-target-health` for each target group and query for the State of each target health description. An empty or unhealthy target group indicates an inactive load balancer.

3. Proceed with deletion safely. Use `aws elbv2 delete-load-balancer` to remove the load balancer, ensuring there are no requests, no healthy targets, and no dependencies on the load balancer's DNS name. Before deletion, cross-check Route 53 and external DNS records for the load balancer's DNS name to confirm there are no references.

If the load balancer has no traffic, no healthy targets, and no external references, it can be removed without risk of affecting other services. Automate this process by using tools like Cloud Cost Analyzer, which scans your AWS environment and flags idle load balancers based on predefined rules. The free tier of Cloud Cost Analyzer provides a read-only CLI that scans for idle load balancers, alongside 89 other cost-saving rules.