Until early 2026 LocalStack 63,725 shipped the open-source Community image, localstack/localstack under the Apache 2.0 license, and a proprietary Pro image with more services. Release 2026.03.0 (23 Mar 2026) merged them, as announced in December 2025: localstack/localstack and localstack/localstack-pro became the same image, which quits unless LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN holds a token from a LocalStack account (not an AWS 24 account). The GitHub 29 repository (github.com/localstack/localstack (https://github.com/localstack/localstack 65,128 ), about 65,000 stars) is archived and read-only, and releases carry calendar versions; the newest here is 2026.08.4:
docker run --rm --name l1-ls-latest localstack/localstack:latest 2>&1 \
| grep -E 'version:|build date|No credentials' | cut -c1-53
echo "exit code: ${PIPESTATUS[0]}"LocalStack version: 2026.8.4 LocalStack build date: 2026-09-23 Reason: No credentials were found in the environment. exit code: 55
The last Community releases, 4.13.1 (2 Feb 2026) and 4.14.0 (26 Feb 2026), still start without a token and print a warning that points to the change. Their source stays on GitHub under Apache 2.0, with no further fixes. This book pins localstack/localstack:4.13.1, on which every example in this chapter was run. The free plan of current releases is for non-commercial use only, which rules it out for a commercial book and most work projects; the pinned open-source image has no such limit, but it also gets no fixes, so at work a paid plan (Hobby Plan) is the supported route.