LocalStack Now Requires an Account — Here's How to Test AWS in Python Without One in 2026

LocalStack archived its GitHub repo on March 23, 2026. The read-only notice went up quietly. No banner. No grace period announcement. Just a new requirement: LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN in your environment — or your CI pipeline fails. If you're in a commercial team on the Hobby tier, you're also hit with a non-commercial-use restriction. The paid plans start at $39/month. Update (March 24, 2026): LocalStack has since posted a blog announcement (blog.localstack.cloud) with staged concessions: unlimited CI, and a free Hobby tier for non-commercial use. Auth token is still required, and Hobby tier needs account creation. The core complaint — 'your CI breaks if you don't have a vendor account' — hasn't changed. The alternatives below don't require either. I'm not going to relitigate whether this was the right call. It's their product. But I've been burned by this category of problem before: tool solves a real pain point with a good free tier, community adopts it into their CI configs and READMEs