Standard NAT Gateway V2 Pricing: Is It Worth It?

Users often search for “Standard NAT Gateway V2 pricing,” hoping that AWS has released a cheaper, next-generation gateway.

The Reality Check: As of late 2025, there is no separate “V2” pricing tier for AWS NAT Gateways. The service has improved under the hood (higher throughput, better metrics), but the billing model remains identical to the original launch.

The Confusion

The term “V2” likely comes from confusion with Internet Gateway (IGW) or NAT Instance generations.

• Internet Gateway: Free. V1 and V2 don’t exist as billing concepts.
• NAT Instances: These use EC2 instance types. Moving from a t2.micro to a t3.micro (the “V3” generation) does save you money and improve performance.

Is a “V2” Coming?

We don’t know. But the community has been asking for a “Tiered” NAT Gateway for years—specifically, a “Lite” version for development environments that doesn’t cost $32/month.

Until AWS announces that, we are stuck with the Standard pricing:

• Standard: $0.045/hr + $0.045/GB.

What You Can Do Instead

If you were looking for “V2” because “V1” is too expensive, your best bet is to look at NAT Instances.

A t4g.nano NAT Instance running the latest Amazon Linux 2023 AMI is effectively a “V2” solution for your wallet. It costs ~$3/month instead of $32/month.

[!TIP] Compare the savings. Use our NAT Gateway Calculator to see how much switching to a NAT Instance (“DIY V2”) would save you annually.