Overview

LocalStack for AWS is a cloud service emulator that runs in a single container on your laptop or in your CI environment. It gives you a fully functional AWS environment — Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, SQS, and 80+ more services — without touching a real AWS account and without incurring cloud costs.

Here’s why developers and teams use it:

• Faster development loops — Test changes against local AWS services instantly, without waiting on real deployments or worrying about cloud costs.
• Integration testing in CI — Run real integration tests against local AWS infrastructure in every pull request, catching bugs before they reach production.
• Validate IaC before applying — Deploy your Terraform, CDK, or CloudFormation to LocalStack first. Confirm it works the way you expect before applying to a real AWS environment.
• Safe experimentation — Explore new AWS services and architectures freely, with no risk to production systems.

LocalStack for AWS also includes advanced capabilities for teams: Cloud Pods for sharing and restoring state, IAM policy enforcement, Chaos Engineering, and more.

Choose your path

Local Development

Set up LocalStack on your laptop and get a serverless app running in under 10 minutes. Deploy Lambda functions, DynamoDB tables, and more — no AWS account needed.

CI/CD Pipelines

Run LocalStack in GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or any container-based CI. Catch infrastructure bugs before they reach production with real integration tests on every pull request.

AI & Agent Workflows

Connect LocalStack to your AI coding assistant via the MCP server, or deploy infrastructure automatically using LocalStack Skills.