Installation
LocalEmu is a free, open-source AWS cloud emulator. All the AWS services you need. One install. No account, no token, no external runtime dependencies.
Install
$ pip install localemu[runtime]This installs:
- •
localemu, the emulator and CLI - •
awsemu, AWS CLI wrapper (auto-configures endpoint + credentials) - • AWS service emulators (pure Python)
Requirements
- • Python 3.10+
- • Docker (optional), enables real container backends for Lambda, ECS, EKS (k3d), RDS, OpenSearch, EC2, and VPC network isolation. Without Docker, all other services still work in pure Python.
Start
$ localemu start
LocalEmu version: 1.0.0
Ready.
LocalEmu is now running on http://localhost:4566 with all services.
Add PERSISTENCE=1 to keep your data across restarts: PERSISTENCE=1 localemu start. See Configuration for details.
Your first commands
$ awsemu s3 mb s3://my-bucket
make_bucket: my-bucket
$ awsemu dynamodb create-table --table-name Users \
--key-schema AttributeName=id,KeyType=HASH \
--attribute-definitions AttributeName=id,AttributeType=S \
--billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST
TableStatus: ACTIVE
$ awsemu sqs create-queue --queue-name my-queue
QueueUrl: http://sqs.us-east-1.localhost:4566/000000000000/my-queue awsemu is a thin wrapper around the AWS CLI. It points to your local LocalEmu instance (http://localhost:4566, override with LOCALEMU_ENDPOINT) and injects AWS's canonical example credentials: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE / wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY. LocalEmu treats these as a root access key by default, so they work with or without IAM_ENFORCEMENT=1. It never reads, touches, or sends your real AWS credentials.
Stop
$ localemu stop
LocalEmu stopped.