How Much Is an AWS NAT Gateway? (It’s More Than You Think)

The short answer: A single AWS NAT Gateway costs about $33 per month just to exist.

But that is rarely what you actually pay.

The Base Price

In us-east-1 (N. Virginia), the price is $0.045 per hour.

• 24 hours x 30 days = 720 hours.
• 720 * $0.045 = $32.40 per month.

This is the “floor.” You cannot pay less than this if the gateway is running.

The Hidden Multipliers

Multiplier 1: Availability Zones

AWS recommends running one NAT Gateway per Availability Zone (AZ). If you deploy to us-east-1a, us-east-1b, and us-east-1c, you now have 3 gateways.

• $32.40 * 3 = $97.20/month.

Multiplier 2: Data Usage

You also pay $0.045 per GB of traffic that goes through the gateway. If your servers download a 500MB Docker image, you pay processing on 500MB. If your application sends 10GB of logs to a third-party service, you pay on 10GB.

Is It Worth It?

For production? Yes. It requires zero maintenance and scales automatically to 45Gbps. For dev/staging? Maybe not. A “NAT Instance” (a small EC2 t3.nano) costs ~$3/month and can handle low traffic easily.

[!NOTE] Check your bill before you build. See exactly how much traffic costs with our NAT Gateway Pricing Calculator.