# Overprovisioned Load Balancer | Cloud Efficiency Hub

Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/overprovisioned-load-balancer

Load balancers incur charges based on provisioned bandwidth shape, even if backend traffic is minimal.

By: PointFive

Updated: 2026-09-28

[Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) 

The short version

Load balancers incur charges based on provisioned bandwidth shape, even if backend traffic is minimal.

PointFive Research

Cloud cost research at PointFive

OCI service

[OCI Load Balancer](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/cloud-services/oci-load-balancer)

Category

[Networking](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/networking)

Reference

CER-0042

Type

Overprovisioned Resource

## Explanation

Why the waste happens and who it affects.

If traffic is low, or if only one backend server is configured, the load balancer may be oversized or unnecessary, especially in test or staging environments.

## Billing model

The pricing dimensions that drive this cost.

Flexible load balancers are charged per load balancer-hour for the base instance plus bandwidth per Mbps per hour. Bandwidth is billed at the configured minimum bandwidth, or actual usage when it is higher, so an oversized minimum shape is billed even when traffic is low.

## How to detect

4 checks to find it in your estate.

- Review traffic metrics to assess actual vs. provisioned throughput

- Identify load balancers with only one or inactive backend servers

- Check for load balancers in non-production environments with little to no usage

- Evaluate whether an OCI Network Load Balancer (Layer 3/4, no charge) or direct instance access is more appropriate

## How to fix

3 ways to remove the waste.

- Lower the minimum bandwidth of flexible load balancers, or move legacy fixed shapes to a flexible shape with a smaller minimum

- Decommission underutilized load balancers

- Consolidate redundant load balancers across applications or environments

## Documentation

Vendor references for pricing and configuration.

[Load Balancing Pricing and Shapes](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/networking/load-balancing/pricing/) 
[Managing Load Balancers](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Balance/Tasks/managingloadbalancer.htm)

## Related inefficiencies

[Browse the library](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub)

- Azure Firewall  CER-0313

### [Azure Firewall Premium SKU Deployed Without Using Premium Features](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/azure-firewall-premium-sku-deployed-without-using-premium-features)

Azure Firewall is available in three SKUs - Basic, Standard, and Premium - each designed for different security requirements and priced accordingly. The Premium SKU includes advanced threat protection capabilities such as TLS inspection,...

Networking

- Azure Virtual WAN  CER-0300

### [Overprovisioned Azure Virtual WAN Hub Capacity](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/overprovisioned-azure-virtual-wan-hub-capacity-a123)

An Azure Virtual WAN hub is provisioned with more capacity than required to support real network traffic. Because hub costs scale with the number of configured scale units, overprovisioned hubs continue to incur higher charges even when...

Networking

- Azure Application Gateway  CER-0411

### [Overprovisioned Minimum Instance Count on Application Gateway v2](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/overprovisioned-minimum-instance-count-on-application-gateway-v2)

Application Gateway v2 (Standard\_v2 and WAF\_v2) bills reserved capacity for every instance in the manual instance count or the autoscale minimum. Each such instance reserves 10 capacity units, and those units are billed every hour the...

Networking

---
Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.