When you start building applications or infrastructure on AWS, you will quickly realize that your account has default limits (also called service quotas) for how many resources you can use:
- Number of EC2 instances per region
- Number of Elastic IPs (EIPs)
- Number of VPCs, subnets, NAT gateways, etc.
These quotas help AWS manage capacity fairly across users, but they can become a bottleneck as your workload scales.
Elastic IP Quota
Elastic IPs are static public IPv4 addresses that you can associate with EC2 instances, NAT Gateways, or Network Interfaces. They’re useful when:
- You need fixed public IPs for whitelisting ( in a firewall)
- You’re deploying public-facing services
- You’re using high availability architectures (multiple NAT Gateways across Availability Zones)
By default, AWS allows only 5 EIPs per region per account, which may not be enough.
If you try to allocate more than your quota allows, you’ll get an error like:
AddressLimitExceeded: The maximum number of addresses has been reached.
Thankfully, you can request an increase to this quota and it’s easy to do via the AWS Management Console.
Increase Elastic IP Quota Using AWS Console
Here’s how you can request a service quota increase using the AWS Console, specifically to increase the number of Elastic IPs.
1. Open the Service Quotas Console
Navigate to the Service Quotas dashboard:
https://console.aws.amazon.com/servicequotas
2. Search for the EIP Quota
In the Search bar, type “Elastic IP”
Then look for:
EC2 – Elastic IP addresses per region
Click on it to open the details.
3. Request a Quota Increase
- Click the “Request quota increase” button.
- Enter the desired number of EIPs .
- Submit the request.
Your request will usually be approved quickly.Sometimes within minutes, though it can take up to 24 hours.
Once your request is approved,
You can immediately allocate more Elastic IPs up to the new quota.
The new quota will be visible in the Service Quotas dashboard.
No need to restart or modify any existing services, the quota increase is a background change.
Please note that AWS charges a small hourly fee for any Elastic IP that is not associated with a running resource. So avoid leaving EIPs unused.
Understanding and increasing AWS Service Quotas is essential for scaling your cloud infrastructure efficiently. If you’re facing challenges with quota limits, resource allocation, or AWS configurations, our expert team is ready to help.
With our comprehensive AWS Management Services, we handle everything from quota management to performance optimization and cloud scalability—ensuring your AWS environment runs smoothly and without interruptions.
