Eliminate wasted cloud spend with automated savings recommendations
Unused load balancers quietly rack up monthly costs—even when not serving traffic. But identifying which balancers are truly idle involves time, effort, and risk.
That’s where nOps Unused ELB Detection comes in. It analyzes all your load balancers (Classic, Application, and Network) to flag those with zero or minimal traffic, so you can confidently and easily remove what’s not in use. Starting today, you can access this new feature in the Cost Optimization Recommendation Dashboard.

Intelligent load balancer analysis
nOps uses a sophisticated analysis system that accurately identifies truly unused load balancers across all ELB types (Classic, Application, and Network) with intelligent traffic detection.
Eliminate wasted spend with confidence: our system distinguishes between load balancers with zero traffic (recommended for deletion) and those with minimal traffic (recommended for review), ensuring you never accidentally remove critical infrastructure. It also considers targets, listeners and target groups.
The system analyzes multiple metrics specific to each load balancer type, including data processing bytes for Classic ELBs and Load Balancer Capacity Units (LCUs) for Application and Network ELBs, providing a comprehensive view of your load balancer usage patterns.
Act on ELB waste with confidence
Recommendation Details provides rich contextual information about each load balancer, including its configuration, traffic patterns, and age. Make informed decisions with specific metrics relevant to the load balancer type and clear explanations of why the load balancer is considered unused or needs to be reviewed.

Each recommendation includes an estimated implementation effort—Low, Medium, or High—based on factors like how the load balancer is configured, whether it’s attached to active resources, and how it’s defined in Infrastructure as Code (IaC). In many cases, unused ELBs can be safely deleted with minimal effort, but nOps highlights any dependencies or configurations that may require a closer look before taking action.
How it Works
Analyze your AWS Cost and Usage Report with our enhanced detection system along with nOps inventory data to identify load balancers that are incurring costs but not serving traffic. The system applies different criteria based on the load balancer type:
- For Classic Load Balancers: Analyzes data processing bytes and load balancer usage
- For Application/Network Load Balancers: Analyzes LCU usage
Review your recommendations: load balancers with zero traffic and no active configuration are recommended for deletion, while those with low but non-zero traffic are flagged for review, ensuring you never delete resources that might still be in use.
Take action on prioritized, low-hanging savings before moving to higher-effort optimizations.
How to Get Started
To start using ELB Waste Detection, Business Contexts+ customers can access this new feature directly from the nOps Dashboard. Have questions? Want more details? Check out the documentation here or reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
If you’re not yet a Business Contexts+ customer, schedule a demo to learn more.
If you’re new to nOps…
nOps was recently ranked #1 with five stars in G2’s cloud cost management category, and we optimize $2+ billion in cloud spend for our customers.
Join our customers using nOps to understand your cloud costs and leverage automation with complete confidence by booking a demo with one of our AWS experts.