Your LocalStack CI Is Broken. Here Are Your Three Options.

Your CI failed this morning. The error is something like: Error: LocalStack requires authentication. Please provide a valid auth token. or: localstack.exceptions.ServiceNotAvailable: The service 's3' is not available in LocalStack Community. Please visit https://localstack.cloud for more info. You didn't change anything. It worked last week. Here's what happened and what to do about it. What Happened LocalStack changed its authentication model in early 2025. Free usage now requires a free account and an auth token. Without one, the service throws authentication errors on startup — which is why your CI pipeline broke without you touching anything. There are three things most developers don't know: The free tier is still free. The auth token requirement was a change to the distribution model, not a paywall. You can get a free token in about 90 seconds at app.localstack.cloud. CI credits are now unlimited. LocalStack initially announced a CI credit limit on the free tier. They reversed it