Building on Azure usually means testing on Azure. Every change to a function, a container app, or a database integration follows the same loop: deploy to a dev environment, wait, check the logs, fix, and redeploy. Add access requests, permission approvals, and shared environments, and a one-line fix can cost an afternoon.
Tired of waiting for cloud deployments and paying for non-production Azure resources? As the lead software engineer of the project, I am incredibly proud to announce that LocalStack for Azure is now open to everyone in Public Preview!
We are solving the cloud-loop problem by giving you a local Azure sandbox directly on your machine. It is self-serve and completely free for the duration of the public preview.
Test Azure changes without waiting on Azure
⚡ Get feedback locally: Run supported Azure services on your machine and see the result of a change without waiting on remote provisioning or deployments.
🏗️ Bring your existing IaC: Deploy your ARM templates, Bicep templates, and Terraform modules locally and validate infrastructure changes before they reach a live subscription. No rewrites are needed.
📦 Give every developer an isolated sandbox: No shared dev environment, no queue, and no tests colliding with another team's changes.
💰 Keep dev/test off your Azure bill: Local runs do not consume Azure resources, cutting non-production spend that is hard to track.
🤖 Give AI agents a safe place to iterate: Agents can deploy, break, and retry in a local sandbox without live credentials or cloud spend.
What you can build and validate locally today
This release focuses on the emulator core: high-fidelity service behavior, reliability, and compatibility with the workflows enterprise teams already run.
🔸 Containers: AKS, Azure Container Apps, Azure Container Instances, Container Registry
🔸 Serverless: Azure Functions, Web Apps,
🔸 Data: Azure SQL DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Cosmos DB, Storage, and more
🔸 Messaging: Service Bus, Event Hubs, Event Grid
🔸 Security and Configuration: Key Vault, App Configuration, Managed Identity
🔸 Networking: Front Door, API Management, VNet, Private Endpoints, and more
🔸 Provisioning: Azure CLI, ARM, Bicep, Terraform, Pulumi
If your solution runs perfectly on Azure but fails on our emulator, that is our bug to fix. Reach out, and we will get it sorted. 🐛
What Public Preview means:
🆓 It is free: There is no cost during the preview. Pricing will be announced at GA, currently expected in early 2027.
🧪 It is built for dev and test: LocalStack for Azure speeds up the work before you deploy to Azure. It does not replace Azure.
Get started in under 5 minutes
👉 Read the full announcement: LocalStack for Azure Public Preview
👉 Get started guide: Documentation
👉 Discussions and Feedbacks: GitHub Organization
👉 Web and Function Apps samples: GitHub Repository
👉 AKS samples and tutorials: GitHub Repository
👇 Don't see your favorite Azure service supported yet? Drop a comment below and tell my team what we should build next!
Top comments (2)
Service Bus and Event Hubs emulation is what caught my eye. Being able to validate a Terraform change locally before it touches a shared subscription removes the worst part of the deploy loop. I would reach for this the first time a template change has to survive three permission approvals.
That's one of the goals of using a local emulator in conjunction with the decrease of the total cost of ownership.