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.

    • VitoRobles@lemmy.todayEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      I can explain!

      AWS is ridiculously complicated. I had to study AWS to learn data analytics and the entry level test was overwhelming with just learning like 10 services.

      The best way to learn of course is to sign up for an account and actually play. But, its really easy to spend $10k because you didn’t set it up correctly.

      That story is actually pretty common. People waking up to $500 bills because they left a server on and some hacker took it over. Or they activated a dozen services and didn’t know how to shut them down.