AWS Emulator: Run AWS Locally, Free and Open Source | LocalEmu
localemu.cloud
LocalEmu is a free, open-source AWS emulator. Run 132 AWS services locally with one pip install: no account, no token, no telemetry. The drop-in LocalStack alternative for the AWS CLI, boto3, Terraform and CDK.

I maintain LocalEmu, a free and open-source (Apache 2.0) AWS emulator. It started as a fork of the archived LocalStack Community edition. The goal is to keep a genuinely free, open local AWS emulator alive and maintained.

What it does:

  • Emulates 132 AWS services on a single endpoint (localhost:4566)
  • Pure-Python core, with real Docker engines for Lambda, EC2, RDS, ECS, EKS, and OpenSearch
  • Point your existing AWS CLI, boto3, Terraform, CDK, or Pulumi at it, zero config
  • No account, no auth token, no telemetry. Persistent state across restarts
  • Optional fidelity knobs: IAM policy enforcement, throttling, latency injection, Lambda cold starts

Why I built it: kill the multi-minute deploy loop, drop the dev/test AWS bill to zero, and stop keeping real credentials on dev machines.

It’s for fast local dev, testing, and learning, not production, and not bit-for-bit parity with the real cloud.

Repo: https://github.com/localemu/localemu Site: https://localemu.cloud/

Happy to answer questions, and feedback is very welcome.