Elastic IPs are often provisioned but forgotten — left unassociated, or still attached to EC2 instances that have been stopped. In either case, AWS treats the EIP as idle and applies an hourly charge. Although the cost per hour is relatively small, these charges accumulate quietly, especially across environments with frequent provisioning, decommissioning, or ephemeral workloads. Many organizations overlook the fact that even a single EIP attached to a stopped instance is billable. Without periodic review, this creates persistent, low-visibility waste across AWS accounts.