How I cut AWS NAT Gateway costs by 30% with VPC endpoints

Replacing public egress for Kinesis and Firehose with VPC private endpoints eliminated unnecessary NAT Gateway traffic.

The Problem

At Nielsen Media, our workloads were sending significant traffic to Kinesis and Firehose through NAT Gateways. NAT Gateway data processing charges were a growing line item.

The Solution

We implemented VPC endpoints for Kinesis and Firehose. This allowed the workloads to reach AWS services over the AWS private network instead of routing through the NAT Gateway.

The Result

30% reduction in overall cloud infrastructure costs
Lower latency for AWS service traffic
Improved security posture by keeping traffic off the public internet

Key Takeaway

Before reaching for bigger instances or reserved capacity, audit your data egress paths. VPC endpoints are often the cheapest and cleanest win.