# Idle Cloud NAT gateway without active traffic Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/idle-cloud-nat-gateway-without-active-traffic Each Cloud NAT gateway provisioned in GCP incurs hourly charges for each external IP address attached, regardless of whether traffic is flowing through... By: PointFive Updated: 2026-09-28 [Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) # Idle Cloud NAT Gateway Without Active Traffic The short version Each Cloud NAT gateway provisioned in GCP incurs hourly charges for each external IP address attached, regardless of whether traffic is flowing through the gateway. PointFive Research Cloud cost research at PointFive GCP service [GCP Cloud NAT](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/cloud-services/gcp-cloud-nat) Category [Networking](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/networking) Reference CER-0174 Type Idle or Unused Resource ## Explanation Why the waste happens and who it affects. In many environments, NAT configurations are created for temporary access (e.g., one-off updates, patching windows, or ephemeral resources) and are never cleaned up. If no traffic is flowing, these NAT gateways remain idle yet continue to generate charges for their NAT IP addresses and for any VM instances still assigned to the gateway. This is especially common in non-production environments or when legacy configurations are forgotten. ## Billing model The pricing dimensions that drive this cost. Billed based on: - Number of NAT IP addresses used per hour - Number of VM instances using the gateway per hour (the hourly gateway rate is capped at 32 VM instances) - Gigabytes of data processed by the gateway, both inbound and outbound. An idle gateway incurs no data processing charges, but it still bills hourly for each NAT IP address it uses and for any VM instances that still have a NAT assignment. ## How to detect 4 checks to find it in your estate. - Identify Cloud NAT gateways with active configurations but no recent egress traffic - Cross-reference NAT configurations with active VM instances or workloads that require external access - Evaluate whether any static IPs are still reserved for inactive NATs - Review staging, test, or decommissioned environments where NATs may remain unintentionally ## How to fix 4 ways to remove the waste. - Decommission unused Cloud NAT gateways with no associated traffic - Release reserved external IP addresses if no longer needed - Consolidate NAT configurations where feasible across shared VPCs or regions - Implement tagging and lifecycle policies for temporary NAT configurations to ensure cleanup ## Documentation Vendor references for pricing and configuration. - [Cloud NAT pricing cloud.google.com](https://cloud.google.com/nat/pricing) - [Cloud NAT overview docs.cloud.google.com](https://docs.cloud.google.com/nat/docs/overview) ## Related inefficiencies [Browse the library](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) - GCP Cloud NAT CER-0331 ### [Excessive Data Processing Fees on High-Throughput Cloud NAT Gateways](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/excessive-data-processing-fees-on-high-throughput-cloud-nat-gateways) Cloud NAT charges a per-GiB data processing fee on all traffic routed through the gateway - both inbound responses and outbound requests. For high-throughput workloads such as web crawlers, data pipelines, container image pulls, and... Networking - GCP Load Balancers CER-0202 ### [Idle Load Balancer](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/idle-load-balancer) Provisioned load balancers continue to generate costs even when they are no longer serving meaningful traffic. This often occurs when applications are decommissioned, testing infrastructure is left behind, or backend services are removed... Networking - GCP Compute Engine CER-0462 ### [Unused Static External IP Address](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/unused-static-external-ip-address) A reserved static external IPv4 address that is not assigned to any resource keeps billing every hour, and Google charges a higher rate for a reserved-but-unused address than for an address in use. Addresses end up unused when the VM they... Networking --- Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.