MiniStack AWS Emulator

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

MiniStack is a free, MIT-licensed drop-in replacement for LocalStack that emulates 25+ AWS services (S3, SQS, DynamoDB, Lambda, SNS, IAM, STS, Kinesis, EventBridge, SecretsManager, SSM, CloudWatch, SES, and more) on a single port (4566). No account, no API key, no telemetry. Works with boto3, AWS CLI, Terraform, CDK, and any SDK.

Installation

Option 1: PyPI (simplest)

pip install ministack
ministack
# Server runs at http://localhost:4566
# Change port: GATEWAY_PORT=5000 ministack

Option 2: Docker Hub

docker run -p 4566:4566 nahuelnucera/ministack

Option 3: Docker Compose (from source)

git clone https://github.com/Nahuel990/ministack
cd ministack
docker compose up -d

Verify it's running

curl http://localhost:4566/_localstack/health

Configuration

AWS CLI Usage

# Set credentials (any non-empty values work)
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=test
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=test
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

# S3
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 mb s3://my-bucket
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 cp ./file.txt s3://my-bucket/
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 ls s3://my-bucket

# SQS
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 sqs create-queue --queue-name my-queue
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 sqs list-queues

# DynamoDB
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 dynamodb list-tables
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 dynamodb create-table \
  --table-name Users \
  --attribute-definitions AttributeName=userId,AttributeType=S \
  --key-schema AttributeName=userId,KeyType=HASH \
  --billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST

# STS (identity check)
aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 sts get-caller-identity

# Use a named profile instead
aws configure --profile local
# Enter: test / test / us-east-1 / json
aws --profile local --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 s3 ls

awslocal wrapper (from source)

chmod +x bin/awslocal
./bin/awslocal s3 ls
./bin/awslocal dynamodb list-tables

boto3 Usage Patterns

Universal client factory

import boto3

ENDPOINT = "http://localhost:4566"

def aws_client(service: str):
    return boto3.client(
        service,
        endpoint_url=ENDPOINT,
        aws_access_key_id="test",
        aws_secret_access_key="test",
        region_name="us-east-1",
    )

def aws_resource(service: str):
    return boto3.resource(
        service,
        endpoint_url=ENDPOINT,
        aws_access_key_id="test",
        aws_secret_access_key="test",
        region_name="us-east-1",
    )

S3

s3 = aws_client("s3")