The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), the AWS SDKs, and your coding agents speak to it over a local HTTPS endpoint using the same AWS APIs they would use in the cloud, from your laptop. AWS Emulator has no additional service fee. You pay only for AWS resources when you deploy on AWS.
You install it from an RPM or Debian package on Linux, and on macOS and Windows you run it in Docker. How it works You install the emulator, start it, and point your tools at the local endpoint. When AWS Emulator starts, it generates its own credentials, a config file, and a certificate, and writes them to ~/.aws/emulator/9297/.
You set environment variables so the AWS SDK talks to your laptop instead of AWS, and your application code stays unchanged. From there, your existing tests, CLI scripts, and coding agents keep working the way they already do.
