LocalStack Reviews

My main use case for LocalStack is to run AWS services locally on our machines, such as running on our laptop or on our server, and for a sandbox for testing our cloud apps.

A quick, specific example of how I use LocalStack for testing my cloud apps is that we use LocalStack for a sandbox or staging environment for AWS resources. We test it on LocalStack, and if everything works well, then we deploy it to AWS.

The best features LocalStack offers include the ability to test everything locally at no cost for AWS, a faster development and instant feedback cycle, offline deployment without needing internet, and it's excellent for learning AWS in a sandbox environment.

Out of those features, I find myself relying on the ability to run it locally for testing at no cost the most.

Using LocalStack has positively impacted my organization by saving 50-60% of our money because of using LocalStack and AWS resources on our local environment.

I calculated that 56% savings mostly on infrastructure cycle because if we use AWS, we have to pay for those resources, but by using LocalStack, we do not need to provision resources on AWS, so that is how we are saving that percentage.

LocalStack can be improved as it is currently not fully compatible with AWS services in each case, and there are limited features right now in that service. Additionally, only some of the services are free, and sometimes things work on LocalStack locally but fail on AWS. There is a performance limit, so I want those things to get improved.

I have been using LocalStack for six months.

In my experience, LocalStack is stable.

LocalStack's scalability is good.

I have seen a return on investment as I mentioned. We are saving 50 to 60% of our money using it.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are not currently paying for LocalStack, and the setup is easy. You just need to install Docker.

Before choosing LocalStack, we had a clear mindset that we wanted to use it.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for LocalStack is to set up a configuration for my environment to configure the AWS components locally on my machine. I use it to have all the components I need to run my applications locally and simulate the use cases of my applications with AWS services.

I use LocalStack to test database services like DynamoDB, test SNS services, and SQS to send messages. Another configuration that I use is Secrets Manager.

All of the features LocalStack offers are great, including AWS services such as S3, SNS, and SQS. The ability to test my application without deploying it to the environment is really beneficial.

I use LocalStack exclusively and do not use other tools. My experience using LocalStack is very good, and I use S3 and databases the most. I run integration tests on containers, build, and deploy LocalStack services, which works very well.

The development environment is complex and not simple. I cannot test my application locally without using LocalStack. All of my applications run on AWS services, and LocalStack plays a fundamental role in my daily work because I need to test my applications locally. Testing applications that integrate with AWS services locally before deploying them to the AWS account is essential.

LocalStack saves me significant time. Without it, whenever I need to test my application, I would have to deploy it to AWS services, which takes a long time. LocalStack allows me to test locally and saves me time before deploying and testing in the AWS account.

The Lambda application is not simple to test locally in LocalStack. Some services are not just plug-and-play. If LocalStack provided more plug-and-play features to run, it would improve the developer experience.

I chose a rating of 8 out of 10 because there is always room to improve. LocalStack is good, and some features can be improved as I mentioned before.

I have been using LocalStack for five years.

I use LocalStack in a private cloud, so it is used only in the developer environment. I gave this product a rating of 8 out of 10.

Private Cloud

Other

In our organization, we heavily rely on AWS for our production environments, which is why my teams and I have been using LocalStack for about two and a half years to completely replicate our cloud environment locally.

A great, specific example of our main use case for LocalStack is developing an API that triggers a Lambda function when an image is uploaded to an S3 bucket. Instead of deploying to AWS and waiting, we spin up LocalStack inside a Docker container. We can upload files via `awslocal`, instantly watch the Lambda trigger, verify the records update in our local DynamoDB, and step through the code with breakpoints. Our main use case is local integration testing and debugging for serverless applications.

Our team continuously uses LocalStack, virtually every time a developer is writing code and wants to test a resource locally. Beyond day-to-day coding, it heavily optimizes our CI and CD pipeline workflows. Instead of spinning up temporary, expensive AWS environments for every pull request, we run LocalStack directly on our GitHub Actions to execute integration and tests.

The positive impact on our organization has been massive, primarily visible in three key outcomes. First is significant cost reduction, as we shifted our integration testing and CI/CD pipelines away from AWS sandboxes, resulting in our non-production bills dropping by over 60%. The second outcome is drastically faster development velocity. We no longer have to wait for features and iterations to take hours due to cloud provisioning. Since LocalStack takes minutes, developer velocity has skyrocketed because the feedback loop is instantaneous. Lastly, higher code quality and fewer bugs have resulted from bug testing locally being so frictionless, enabling our engineering teams to run comprehensive integration test suites much earlier and more frequently in the development cycle. This means we are catching and resolving edge case bugs locally before they even have a chance to hit production.

The best features that LocalStack offers include comprehensive API coverage, as it seamlessly emulates over AWS services such as S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, and SQS locally, which keeps our development environment incredibly accurate. The `awslocal` CLI wrapper is another feature that we heavily utilize. Cloud Pods allow our team to take snapshots of our local state and easily share them with other developers to reproduce specific bugs or environments instantly. Another valuable feature is Hot Swapping Lambda functions.

The `awslocal` CLI wrapper and Hot Swapping Lambda have completely transformed our development speed. The `awslocal` wrapper saves us from writing tedious scripts full of custom endpoint URL parameters, allowing us to run standard AWS commands seamlessly, which means our onboarding time for new developers dropped to almost zero since they do not have to learn proprietary syntax. A specific example where Hot Swapping made a huge difference was during a major refactor of an image processing pipeline. We had a complex Lambda function parsing metadata, and we were hitting edge case bugs with a specific format. Normally, fixing this would involve a slow cycle of changing the code, rebuilding the container, redeploying locally, and triggering again.

Resource consumption is the one pain point, as running a full LocalStack instance with multiple services can be quite heavy on our system's RAM and CPU, sometimes slowing down older developer laptops. Additionally, feature gating is another issue, as critical advanced services such as RDS and EKS require the paid Pro and Enterprise licenses, which can make it hard to justify for small teams just starting out.

For documentation, clarity can be improved, as the documentation can sometimes lag behind the rapid releases of new versions, forcing us to dive into GitHub issues to figure out the breaking changes or specific configurations.

I have been using LocalStack for about two and a half years to completely replicate our cloud environment locally.

LocalStack's governance and security is one of its biggest hidden strengths. Since everything runs entirely inside our local network or a local container, it gives our security teams massive peace of mind. When considering its AI capabilities, such as emulating AWS SageMaker, developers can test model pipelines completely offline, meaning none of our internal code or company data leaks out to an external or public cloud or third-party server during the testing phase.

When it comes to the accuracy and reliability of LocalStack's output, it is a mixed bag depending on what you are trying to test. For emulating the orchestration layer, such as ensuring your API contracts match AWS's spec or validating that your application accurately formats requests to SageMaker endpoints, it is incredibly reliable. The responses follow the exact structure you would expect from the live AWS API, which is perfect for building out application logic and checking integration flow without surprises.

We did not purchase LocalStack through the AWS Marketplace; rather, we subscribe to the commercial license directly via LocalStack's website.

My advice to others looking into using LocalStack is to start small but fully commit to integration. Do not try to mock your entire cloud infrastructure on day one; instead, start by moving a core serverless flow, such as an S3 bucket triggering a Lambda function, into LocalStack and expand from there.

I rate LocalStack an 8 out of 10 because it is an incredible must-have tool for any organization deeply integrated into the AWS ecosystem due to how much it saves on costs and accelerates developer velocity. The only reasons it is not a perfect 10 are the occasional parity gap with advanced AWS features and its heavy resource consumption; however, it is a game-changer.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our organization uses LocalStack to develop a fully functional local cloud emulator. It helps us to develop and run our cloud applications and test them entirely on our local machine.

We develop several complex architectures which can be developed serverless. We do not need to deploy or wait for the cloud during development if we use LocalStack. It also helps us to develop our application offline where we do not have access to the internet, in remote areas, or if we are on a plane.

Using LocalStack helps our team collaboration. Different members of our team can use this cloud infrastructure and can share and save their work.

The best feature LocalStack offers is its seamless integration with AWS Toolkits for Visual Studio.

The seamless integration with AWS Toolkits for Visual Studio reduces our development time. Additionally, it significantly reduces our cloud cost because it eliminates the need for us to frequently sign up and tear down any real AWS resources to validate our requests.

Since we are developing and testing locally, LocalStack reduces our server cost significantly. There is no latency, so our development and testing time is reduced significantly.

Several of its features are paywalled and require payment. Additionally, LocalStack does not 100% replicate AWS functionality. It more or less works like an emulator.

I have been using LocalStack for the past ten months.

LocalStack is pretty stable.

LocalStack is scalable, but we only use it for testing, so this question does not apply to our use case.

I have not reached customer support for any query. There was never a need for it.

We have only used LocalStack. Earlier, we used to directly use AWS servers.

Exact numbers will be difficult to pinpoint, but the saving in terms of monetary value and in terms of time is significant.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing LocalStack.

Organizations should definitely check out LocalStack if they want to reduce their development and testing costs. Developers can save a lot of time and it is also a benefit for companies as it saves a lot of money that they would otherwise have spent on AWS infrastructure.

Regarding LocalStack's AI capabilities, I believe there is no problem in case of security. We fully trust that. We have not noticed any security concerns with LocalStack's AI capabilities. Regarding LocalStack's AI capabilities, I think it is pretty reliable. I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for LocalStack is to validate Docker services that are using AWS components like DynamoDB or SQS queues, things around AWS products.

A quick specific example of how I use LocalStack is that our product uses a lot of DynamoDB, so I need an instance that simulates DynamoDB when our microservices are contacting with the database repository. In this case, LocalStack provides the DynamoDB mock that allows us to validate and test our services.

The best features LocalStack offers include an extensive simulation of several AWS products, such as DynamoDB, SQS, and authentication. Several products facilitate the lives of software engineers when coding and testing connections or data from DynamoDB or storing that data. It is very important to have pre-made mocks instead of wasting time creating them to test our microservices. This is a great help.

LocalStack positively impacts my organization because it is used across the organization, increasing the productivity of all team members, not just developers but also QAs sometimes. It is an extensive tool with many AWS products, and since we are in a company that primarily works with the AWS cloud, this is very positive and easy to work with LocalStack. We do not have many configurations to do or anything very tricky; we just lift a Docker container with configurations available on the internet, making all developers and QAs very productive and contributing to the increased delivery of our product organization.

LocalStack can be improved by enabling all premium features, but that is not the case. It could be more similar to the AWS product in some cases, depending on the AWS product we are using, particularly in simulating the bandwidths we use with AWS products. If it could simulate those bandwidths, the tests would be more reliable regarding performance, and additional functionalities like those in AWS products could be provided in LocalStack. As AWS products always improve and change, LocalStack must keep up with those changes more quickly.

I do not have much to add about needed improvements other than that the UI/UX of LocalStack is very good and friendly. LocalStack could provide a file to configure the Docker containers that allow us to start LocalStack without needing to search the internet; we could download that file, for instance, instead of following the documentation, which would greatly improve the lives of the developers.

I have been using LocalStack for about three years and some months.

LocalStack is very stable, and I have not experienced bugs or breakdowns. The only caveat is that some AWS features are missing, but other than that, it remains very stable.

I cannot answer how LocalStack's scalability is because we have not used it for performance tests; we have only conducted local tests individually by programmers and QAs. For performance tests, we used the real AWS, employing tools like JMeter and BlazeMeter instead of LocalStack.

I would describe the customer support of LocalStack as great since I have never needed it; not needing customer support is a positive aspect in my view.

We did not have a different commercial solution before; it was custom mocks created by us with Docker containers, solely through code implementation. We also had some mocks using Mockoon, but they did not simulate AWS products.

In terms of return on investment, we do not have a metric for fewer employees needed because we are increasing our workforce due to many projects. However, I can state that time saved is about ten to fifteen percent across the company in the testing area, not in the implementation area but in testing. Consequently, since time is saved, we have also saved about five percent of the money. This is not equal to the time saved because we have no costs with LocalStack, but it is approximately that much.

I can share specific outcomes or metrics I have seen as a result of using LocalStack. We eradicated the time we spent maintaining custom mocks, which was about ten hours per month, and we also eliminated the time spent creating mocks, which could take around two or three days for each mock, depending on the project. Additionally, the time spent testing is reduced by about twenty percent because LocalStack is very reliable, while the mocks we created always required tweaks to make them work. That increased productivity, and we have specific metrics reflecting that.

I have not encountered licensing or pricing issues, as we are using the free version, and the setup cost is insignificant because it is easier to set up LocalStack.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing LocalStack because it was the first solution that came to mind, and after searching the internet, I found it to be a great product. I did not feel the need to spend time evaluating other options since we are using the free version. If we decide to transition to the paid version in the future, then we may need to evaluate other options to see which is best for our company.

I would like to add that LocalStack is an excellent provider or simulator for DynamoDB, so we can rely on the results at least at the local level. However, we must perform the performance tests with AWS itself because we need to evaluate the performance and also the user experience with the actual latency that is provided by AWS.

LocalStack is deployed on-premises, specifically used on each local computer of the developers. We do not have a central installation of LocalStack; each one of us has an installation on our local computer to conduct local tests before performing further tests with AWS.

My advice for others looking into using LocalStack is that if they are working with AWS products, it provides great value because it offers most AWS products for free and simulates them quite well, allowing us to create services, microservices, or Docker containers that communicate with these products. You can simulate almost all the main operations you need to test and then have the confidence to test with the actual AWS components in the cloud.

My additional thought about LocalStack is to encourage them to keep up the good work with the product and improve LocalStack components, as I trust the market will adopt LocalStack because it is a very good product. I would rate this product nine out of ten.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The main use case for LocalStack was about simulation in order to have a low impact on costs for our AWS environments.

An example of how I use LocalStack is to have a simulation for our Vault, where we store our secrets. The way we store it was to have an internal software that we can give to others who are non-technical.

Some features of LocalStack that stand out for me are that I have the opportunity to integrate with many third-party systems, and for example, I used it in connection with PostgreSQL because we needed to use a shared database.

The cost saving with LocalStack was very useful to lower the expenses in this way, because we need another company to administer our AWS.

LocalStack could be improved by adding more feedback when you use the CLI. I had to always use some other call in order to verify my operation.

I have been using LocalStack for almost one year.

In my experience, LocalStack is stable.

I don't know about LocalStack's scalability, as I didn't reach this use of LocalStack.

I don't know how the customer support is, as I never had to contact customer support.

It was the first time I used a solution like LocalStack.

I downloaded LocalStack for free instead of purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace.

There was no cost with LocalStack because it was free.

My advice is to get a full view of LocalStack, as it is very useful. I give this review a rating of 8.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for LocalStack is for tests on my machine. For example, when I want to create a table in AWS, I create a LocalStack and use it in my tests before I publish the Terraform. I also create my application container and create the tables in LocalStack for running all my tests. I use not only tables, but also SQS and SNS. I only have features that I use to add about my main use case for LocalStack, to be honest.

The best features LocalStack offers are DynamoDB and container tests. I use a lot of testing containers, and it has helped me significantly.

LocalStack helps me with containers because it is easy to configure. I write my tests and when I need to deploy an application, all my tests are running in my pipeline through my DevOps process, and I can guarantee there is quality in my code. I have a container with LocalStack testing everything.

LocalStack has positively impacted my organization by improving the quality of the software and allowing us to test comprehensively.

I really do not have an opinion right now about how LocalStack can be improved because for my use, the features that I use are perfect. There may be many features that I have not used. Everyone here uses the same features that I use, so I cannot add more about needed improvements. It is pretty easy to use.

I have been using LocalStack for about two years.

I have not seen any return on investment for myself on my machine.

I do not know about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for LocalStack because I just use it for myself. I do not use LocalStack in the production environment, only for myself to do my tests.

For example, sometimes I just do a proof of concept. Instead of creating a Terraform and publishing on AWS and having to create my table and my query over there, I do not need to do everything when doing a proof of concept on my machine. It has helped me a lot. I create a LocalStack and everything is working.

For the features that I use, I would say LocalStack deserves a 10 because I do not use any other features. I give LocalStack a 10 because it is pretty easy. I run my container on my machine and everything is working. It is pretty easy to create an SQS and SNS. For the features that I use, it is perfect and easy. I rate this review a 10.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)