I have a Python Lambda function that queries my EC2 instance within a private VPC. I also attempted to query an external IP address, but I was disappointed to find out that it requires a NAT setup, which is a bit pricey for a personal project.

I thought of using my EC2 instance in the private network (which already has internet access) as a proxy with Squid for my AWS Lambda function.

Is there a more efficient way to achieve this without incurring the cost of a NAT?

I tried to achieve this before using the AWS NAT, which is expensive.