MiniStack vs Floci vs LocalStack: Honest Performance Benchmark (April 3rd 2026)

We ran 30 API operations, throughput tests, and service coverage checks against real Docker containers. No cherry-picking. No marketing. Just numbers. TL;DR Metric MiniStack Floci LocalStack Free Services supported 31 20 ~15 (rest paywalled) Image size 211 MB 276 MB ~1 GB Memory after load 39 MB 56 MB ~500 MB Startup time <2s ~3s ~15-30s Median API latency 4.6 ms 5.2 ms varies License MIT MIT BSL (restricted) Methodology Fresh docker system prune -af --volumes before each run Both images pulled from Docker Hub (nahuelnucera/ministack:latest, hectorvent/floci:latest) Each operation run 5 times, median taken All tests use boto3 with endpoint_url=http://localhost:{port} Machine: Apple Silicon M4, 24 GB RAM, Docker Desktop No warm-up runs — cold container, first request measured Image Size nahuelnucera/ministack:latest 211 MB hectorvent/floci:latest 276 MB localstack/localstack:latest ~1.0 GB MiniStack is 24% smaller than Floci and 5x smaller than LocalStack. MiniStack uses Alpine + Pyt