I built a free, open-source alternative to LocalStack — CloudDev

If you've been following the news, LocalStack recently ended its

free Community Edition. Developers now need an account and are

being pushed toward paid plans.

So I built CloudDev — a lightweight, 100% free, open-source

local AWS development environment. No account. No paywalls. Forever.

What is CloudDev?

CloudDev lets you run core AWS services locally on your machine

with a single command:

clouddev up

It starts local emulators for:

• 🪣 Amazon S3 — object storage


• 🗄️ Amazon DynamoDB — NoSQL database


• ⚡ AWS Lambda — serverless functions


• 📨 Amazon SQS — message queues


• 🌐 Amazon API Gateway — HTTP routing to Lambda


• 🖥️ Web Dashboard — live service status


• 🔍 IaC Detection — auto-configure from Terraform/CloudFormation

Why I built it

Developing on AWS is painful:

• You have to deploy to the cloud just to test


• Provisioning Lambda or API Gateway takes minutes


• Accidental usage generates unexpected charges


• Hard to test locally without internet

CloudDev solves all of this.

How it works

1. Initialize a project

clouddev init my-app

cd my-app

This creates:

my-app/

  clouddev.yml

  functions/

  infrastructure/

2. Configure services (clouddev.yml)

services:

  s3: true

  dynamodb: true

  lambda: true

  sqs: false

  api_gateway: true

3. Start your local cloud

clouddev up

S3 server starting on port 4566

DynamoDB server starting on port 4569

Lambda server starting on port 4574

API Gateway starting on port 4572

Dashboard running at http://localhost:4580

CloudDev is running. Press Ctrl+C to stop...

4. Use with the real AWS CLI

# S3 — create bucket and upload file

aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 mb s3://my-bucket

aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/



# DynamoDB — create table and put item

aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4569 dynamodb create-table \

  --table-name Users \

  --attribute-definitions AttributeName=id,AttributeType=S \

  --key-schema AttributeName=id,KeyType=HASH \

  --billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST



# Lambda — create and invoke function

aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4574 lambda create-function \

  --function-name hello \

  --runtime python3.9 \

  --handler hello.handler \

  --role arn:aws:iam::000000000000:role/test \

  --zip-file fileb://hello.zip



aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4574 lambda invoke \

  --function-name hello \

  --payload '{"key": "value"}' \

  output.txt

5. Auto-detect from Terraform

Have an existing Terraform project? Just run:

clouddev detect

CloudDev scans your .tf files and automatically enables

the right services in clouddev.yml.

6. Web Dashboard

Open http://localhost:4580 to see live service status:

![CloudDev Dashboard showing all services running in green]

How it compares to LocalStack

Tech stack

CloudDev is built in Go — which means:

• Single binary, no runtime dependencies


• Fast startup


• Low memory usage

What's next

• Kubernetes integration


• Cost estimation before deployment


• Plugin system for additional AWS services


• More AWS service emulators

Try it out

👉 GitHub: github.com/Jeffrin-dev/CloudDev

If you find it useful, please ⭐ the repo and share it with

other AWS developers who are affected by the LocalStack change!

Contributions are very welcome — check out

CONTRIBUTING.md

to get started.

Built with Go, Let's Get Started !