I have an ECS task running on an EC2 instance that needs to be able to make API calls, and therefore needs to be able to access the internet. From what I found online, it appears that an NAT Gateway is the most popular solution to this.

The managed NAT Gateway service provided by AWS seems quite expensive (over $30/mo) for something as simple as allowing a task to access the internet. Are there any more affordable alternatives aside from creating a public IP address for the instance?