Floci – A free, open-source local AWS emulator

Floci, an open-source project by developer Hector Ventura, has launched as a direct, no-strings-attached alternative to LocalStack's now-restricted Community Edition. Named after the 'floccus' cloud formation, it's a lightweight local AWS emulator distributed as a ~90 MB Docker image under a permissive MIT license. The tool requires no authentication tokens, imposes no CI/CD restrictions, and promises to remain free forever. It boots in approximately 24 milliseconds and idles at just 13 MiB of memory—a stark contrast to LocalStack Community's 3.3-second startup and 143 MiB footprint.

Technically, Floci supports over 20 AWS services with notable coverage for API Gateway v2, Cognito, ElastiCache with Redis and IAM auth, and RDS with PostgreSQL/MySQL and IAM auth—areas where LocalStack's free tier has partial or no support. It passes 408 out of 408 SDK compatibility tests. Integration is straightforward: developers point their existing AWS SDK (Java v2, Python boto3, Node.js v3) to `http://localhost:4566` with dummy credentials. Configuration is managed via environment variables, and data persistence modes (memory, persistent, hybrid) are customizable. The project explicitly positions itself as a community-driven solution following LocalStack's decision to sunset its free community version in March 2026, which removed CI support and froze security updates.