LocalStack has recently announced changes to the delivery of its AWS Cloud emulators, dropping the popular open source Community Edition, and creating a single image that requires registration. Projects that currently pull the latest community image will need to update their workflows.
In the last few years, LocalStack has maintained two separate versions of LocalStack for AWS: a Community Edition, open-source under an Apache 2.0 license and freely available to the community, and a Pro Edition, only accessible with a paid license. According to the announcement, LocalStack is now combining these components into a single image. It will provide a free, account-based option for individual and open-source users and introduce a new command-line interface (CLI v2) to support local cloud development. Waldemar Hummer and Gerta Sheganaku, co-founders and co-CEOs at LocalStack, write:
LocalStack started as a scrappy open-source experiment, and the community made it what it is today. Over time, however, the scope, security requirements, and operational complexity of maintaining high-fidelity AWS emulation have grown significantly. To continue delivering accurate, secure, and production-grade cloud emulation – while still offering a free entry point – we need a distribution model that lets us engage directly with users, understand how LocalStack is used, and sustainably invest in the platform.
LocalStack is a popular cloud service emulator that runs locally and replicates many AWS services, allowing applications to be developed and tested on a local machine without connecting to the live AWS cloud. In a popular Reddit thread, the community expressed concerns about the move and the project’s future. While some developers hope that AWS will one day acquire LocalStack, user alvsanand writes:
It’s ironic to read them calling it as an ‘open-source experiment’ rather than a full project, especially since their entire reputation was built on being open-source. They have the right to do it, but they shouldn’t insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise.
User rad15h suggests instead:
There is an alternative – build it yourself. (…) AI agents open up options that never would have been sensible or economical before. And this is one of those cases.
When discussing alternatives and workarounds, different practitioners mention Moto, a library that allows mocking of AWS services, and the recent Vera AWS, a local EC2 emulator. Going forward, LocalStack will not release any further updates to the Community Edition, with product enhancements and security patches applied only to the new version. Hummer and Sheganaku warn:
For those using the Community edition of LocalStack for AWS today (i.e., the localstack/localstack Docker image), any project that automatically pulls the latest image of LocalStack for AWS from Docker Hub will need to be updated before the change goes live.
A limited free plan is available for developers experimenting with AWS “recreationally,” and the tools remain free for students and open source projects. The number of CI credits allotted to a workspace depends on the pricing tier, with the free plan not including them. On Reddit, many developers question the credits system for CI builds, suggesting it is “unreasonable,” with Brian Rinaldi, head of developer relations at LocalStack, acknowledging the challenge and suggesting that the company will likely soon revise it.
The switch is currently planned for March, with the new LocalStack for AWS available via a single-image distribution on Docker Hub at localstack/localstack. The source code for prior versions of the Community Edition will remain available on GitHub, but the repository will be inactive. Paid plans for LocalStack on AWS start at 39 USD per license per month when billed annually.
