Standard Load Balancers are frequently provisioned for internal services, internet-facing applications, or testing environments. When a workload is decommissioned or moved, the load balancer may be left behind without any active backend pool or traffic — but continues to incur hourly charges for each frontend IP configuration.Because Azure does not automatically remove or alert on inactive load balancers, and because they may not show significant outbound traffic, these resources often persist unnoticed. In dynamic or multi-team environments, this can result in a growing number of unused Standard Load Balancers generating silent, recurring costs.
In dynamic environments — especially during autoscaling, testing, or infrastructure changes — it's common for load balancers to remain provisioned after their backend resources have been decommissioned. When this happens, the load balancer continues to incur hourly charges despite serving no functional purpose. These inactive resources often go unnoticed, particularly in dev/test environments or when deployment pipelines fail to include proper cleanup logic. Over time, the accumulation of unused load balancers contributes to unnecessary recurring costs with no operational benefit.