Elastic IP address concepts and rules Work with Elastic IP addresses

Associate Elastic IP addresses with resources in your VPC

An Elastic IP address is a static, public IPv4 address designed for dynamic cloud computing. You can associate an Elastic IP address with any instance or network interface in any VPC in your account. With an Elastic IP address, you can mask the failure of an instance by rapidly remapping the address to another instance in your VPC.

Elastic IP address concepts and rules

To use an Elastic IP address, you first allocate it for use in your account. Then, you can associate it with an instance or network interface in your VPC. Your Elastic IP address remains allocated to your AWS account until you explicitly release it.

An Elastic IP address is a property of a network interface. You can associate an Elastic IP address with an instance by updating the network interface attached to the instance. The advantage of associating the Elastic IP address with the network interface instead of directly with the instance is that you can move all the attributes of the network interface from one instance to another in a single step. For more information, see Elastic network interfaces in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

The following rules apply:

An Elastic IP address can be associated with a single instance or network interface at a time.
You can move an Elastic IP address from one instance or network interface to another.
If you associate an Elastic IP address with the eth0 network interface of your instance, its current public IPv4 address (if it had one) is released to the EC2-VPC public IP address pool. If you disassociate the Elastic IP address, the eth0 network interface is automatically assigned a new public IPv4 address within a few minutes. This doesn't apply if you've attached a second network interface to your instance.
To ensure efficient use of Elastic IP addresses, we impose a small hourly charge when they aren't associated with a running instance, or when they are associated with a stopped instance or an unattached network interface. While your instance is running, you aren't charged for one Elastic IP address associated with the instance, but you are charged for any additional Elastic IP addresses associated with the instance. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Pricing.
You're limited to five Elastic IP addresses. To help conserve them, you can use a NAT device. For more information, see Connect to the internet or other networks using NAT devices.
Elastic IP addresses for IPv6 are not supported.
You can tag an Elastic IP address that's allocated for use in a VPC, however, cost allocation tags are not supported. If you recover an Elastic IP address, tags are not recovered.
You can access an Elastic IP address from the internet when the security group and network ACL allow traffic from the source IP address. The reply traffic from within the VPC back to the internet requires an internet gateway. For more information, see Security groups and Network ACLs.
You can use any of the following options for the Elastic IP addresses:
- Have Amazon provide the Elastic IP addresses. When you select this option, you can associate the Elastic IP addresses with a network border group. This is the location from which we advertise the CIDR block. Setting the network border group limits the CIDR block to this group.
- Use your own IP addresses. For information about bringing your own IP addresses, see Bring your own IP addresses (BYOIP) in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

There are differences between an Elastic IP address that you use in a VPC and one that you use in EC2-Classic. For more information, see Differences between EC2-Classic and VPC in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances. You can move an Elastic IP address that you've allocated for use in the EC2-Classic platform to the VPC platform. For more information, see Elastic IP addresses in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

Elastic IP addresses are regional. For more information about using Global Accelerator to provision global IP addresses, see Using global static IP addresses instead of regional static IP addresses in the AWS Global Accelerator Developer Guide.

Work with Elastic IP addresses

The following sections describe how you can work with Elastic IP addresses.

Tasks

Allocate an Elastic IP address
Associate an Elastic IP address
View your Elastic IP addresses
Tag an Elastic IP address
Disassociate an Elastic IP address
Transfer Elastic IP addresses
Release an Elastic IP address
Recover an Elastic IP address
API and command overview

Allocate an Elastic IP address

Before you use an Elastic IP, you must allocate one for use in your VPC.

To allocate an Elastic IP address

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Choose Allocate Elastic IP address.
For Public IPv4 address pool choose one of the following:
- Amazon's pool of IP addresses—If you want an IPv4 address to be allocated from Amazon's pool of IP addresses.
- My pool of public IPv4 addresses—If you want to allocate an IPv4 address from an IP address pool that you have brought to your AWS account. This option is disabled if you do not have any IP address pools.
- Customer owned pool of IPv4 addresses—If you want to allocate an IPv4 address from a pool created from your on-premises network for use with an Outpost. This option is only available if you have an Outpost.
(Optional) Add or remove a tag.

[Add a tag] Choose Add new tag and do the following:
- For Key, enter the key name.
- For Value, enter the key value.
[Remove a tag] Choose Remove to the right of the tag’s Key and Value.
Choose Allocate.

Note
If your account supports EC2-Classic, first choose VPC.

Associate an Elastic IP address

You can associate an Elastic IP with a running instance or network interface in your VPC.

After you associate the Elastic IP address with your instance, the instance receives a public DNS hostname if DNS hostnames are enabled. For more information, see DNS attributes for your VPC.

To associate an Elastic IP address with an instance or network interface

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Select an Elastic IP address that's allocated for use with a VPC (the Scope column has a value of vpc), and then choose Actions, Associate Elastic IP address.
Choose Instance or Network interface, and then select either the instance or network interface ID. Select the private IP address with which to associate the Elastic IP address. Choose Associate.

View your Elastic IP addresses

You can view the Elastic IP addresses that are allocated to your account.

To view your Elastic IP addresses

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
To filter the displayed list, start typing part of the Elastic IP address or one of its attributes in the search box.

Tag an Elastic IP address

You can apply tags to your Elastic IP address to help you identify it or categorize it according to your organization's needs.

To tag an Elastic IP address

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Select the Elastic IP address and choose Tags.
Choose Manage tags, enter the tag keys and values as required, and choose Save.

Disassociate an Elastic IP address

To change the resource that the Elastic IP address is associated with, you must first disassociate it from the currently associated resource.

To disassociate an Elastic IP address

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Select the Elastic IP address, and then choose Actions, Disassociate Elastic IP address.
When prompted, choose Disassociate.

Transfer Elastic IP addresses

This section describes how to transfer Elastic IP addresses from one AWS account to another. Transferring Elastic IP addresses can be helpful in the following situations:

Organizational restructuring – Use Elastic IP address transfers to quickly move workloads from one AWS account to another. You don't have to wait for new Elastic IP addresses to be allowlisted in your security groups and NACLs.
Centralized security administration – Use a centralized AWS security account to track and transfer Elastic IP addresses that have been vetted for security compliance.
Disaster recovery – Use Elastic IP address transfers to quickly remap IPs for public-facing internet workloads during emergency events.

There is no charge for transferring Elastic IP addresses.

Tasks

Enable Elastic IP address transfer
Disable Elastic IP address transfer
Accept a transferred Elastic IP address

Enable Elastic IP address transfer

This section describes how to accept a transferred Elastic IP address. Note the following limitations related to enabling Elastic IP addresses for transfer:

You can transfer Elastic IP addresses from any AWS account (source account) to any other AWS account in the same AWS Region (transfer account).
When you transfer an Elastic IP address, there is a two-step handshake between the AWS accounts. When the source account starts the transfer, the transfer accounts have seven hours to accept the Elastic IP address transfer, or the Elastic IP address is returned to its original owner.
AWS does not notify transfer accounts about pending Elastic IP address transfer requests. The owner of the source account must notify the owner of the transfer account that there is an Elastic IP address transfer request that they must accept.
Any tags that are associated with an Elastic IP address being transferred are reset when the transfer is complete.
You cannot transfer Elastic IP addresses allocated from public IPv4 address pools that you bring to your AWS account – commonly referred to as Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) address pools.
If you have enabled and configured AWS Outposts, you might have allocated Elastic IP addresses from a customer-owned IP address pool (CoIP). You cannot transfer Elastic IP addresses allocated from a CoIP. However, you can use AWS RAM to share a CoIP with another account. For more information, see Customer-owned IP addresses in the AWS Outposts User Guide.
You can use Amazon VPC IPAM to track the transfer of Elastic IP addresses to accounts in an organization from AWS Organizations. For more information, see View IP address history. If an Elastic IP address is transferred to an AWS account outside of the organization, the IPAM audit history of the Elastic IP address is lost.

These steps must be completed by the source account.

To enable Elastic IP address transfer

Ensure that you're using the source AWS account.
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Select one or more Elastic IP address to enable for transfer and choose Actions, Enable transfer.
If you are transferring multiple Elastic IP addresses, you’ll see the Transfer type option. Choose one of the following options:
- Choose Single account if you are transferring the Elastic IP addresses to a single AWS account.
- Choose Multiple accounts if you are transferring the Elastic IP addresses to multiple AWS accounts.
Under Transfer account ID, enter the IDs of the AWS accounts that you want to transfer the Elastic IP addresses to.
Confirm the transfer by entering enable in the text box.
Choose Submit.
To accept the transfer, see Accept a transferred Elastic IP address. To disable the transfer, see Disable Elastic IP address transfer.

Disable Elastic IP address transfer

This section describes how to disable an Elastic IP transfer after the transfer has been enabled.

These steps must be completed by the source account that enabled the transfer.

To disable an Elastic IP address transfer

Ensure that you're using the source AWS account.
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
In the resource list of Elastic IPs, ensure that you have the property enabled that shows the column Transfer status.
Select one or more Elastic IP address that have a Transfer status of Pending, and choose Actions, Disable transfer.
Confirm by entering disable in the text box.
Choose Submit.

Accept a transferred Elastic IP address

This section describes how to accept a transferred Elastic IP address.

When you transfer an Elastic IP address, there is a two-step handshake between AWS accounts: the source account (either a standard AWS account or an AWS Organizations account) and the transfer accounts. When the source account starts the transfer, the transfer accounts have seven hours to accept the Elastic IP address transfer, or the Elastic IP address will return to its original owner.

When accepting transfers, note the following exceptions that might occur and how to resolve them:

AddressLimitExceeded: If your transfer account has exceeded the Elastic IP address quota, the source account can enable Elastic IP address transfer, but this exception occurs when the transfer account tries to accept the transfer. By default, all AWS accounts are limited to 5 Elastic IP addresses per Region. See Elastic IP address limit in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances for instructions on increasing the limit.
InvalidTransfer.AddressCustomPtrSet: If you or someone in your organization has configured the Elastic IP address that you are attempting to transfer to use reverse DNS lookup, the source account can enable transfer for the Elastic IP address, but this exception occurs when the transfer account tries to accept the transfer. To resolve this issue, the source account must remove the DNS record for the Elastic IP address. For more information, see Remove a reverse DNS record in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.
InvalidTransfer.AddressAssociated: If an Elastic IP address is associated with an ENI or EC2 instance, the source account can enable transfer for the Elastic IP address, but this exception occurs when the transfer account tries to accept the transfer. To resolve this issue, the source account must disassociate the Elastic IP address. For more information, see Disassociate an Elastic IP address in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

For any other exceptions, contact AWS Support.

These steps must be completed by the transfer account.

To accept an Elastic IP address transfer

Ensure that you're using the transfer account.
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Choose Actions, Accept transfer.
No tags that are associated with the Elastic IP address being transferred are transferred with the Elastic IP address when you accept the transfer. If you want to define a Name tag for the Elastic IP address that you are accepting, select Create a tag with a key of 'Name' and a value that you specify.
Enter the Elastic IP address that you want to transfer.
If you are accepting multiple transferred Elastic IP addresses, choose Add address to enter an additional Elastic IP address.
Choose Submit.

Release an Elastic IP address

If you no longer need an Elastic IP address, we recommend that you release it. You incur charges for any Elastic IP address that's allocated for use with a VPC but that's not associated with an instance. The Elastic IP address must not be associated with an instance or network interface.

To release an Elastic IP address

Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
In the navigation pane, choose Elastic IPs.
Select the Elastic IP address, and then choose Actions, Release Elastic IP addresses.
When prompted, choose Release.

Recover an Elastic IP address

If you release an Elastic IP address but change your mind, you might be able to recover it. You cannot recover the Elastic IP address if it has been allocated to another AWS account, or if recovering it results in you exceeding your Elastic IP address quota.

You can recover an Elastic IP address by using the Amazon EC2 API or a command line tool.

To recover an Elastic IP address using the AWS CLI

Use the allocate-address command and specify the IP address using the --address parameter.


aws ec2 allocate-address --domain vpc --address 203.0.113.3

API and command overview

You can perform the tasks described in this section using the command line or an API. For more information about the command line interfaces and a list of available API actions, see Working with Amazon VPC.