DynamoDB and SQS containers with Docker Compose

Published June 13, 2026・Last updated June 13, 2026・2 min read

Docker Compose facilitates spinning up local AWS-compatible services without an AWS account. This post covers DynamoDB Local for key-value storage and ElasticMQ for an SQS-compatible message queue. A common pattern is to persist state in DynamoDB and notify workers through SQS.

Prerequisites

• Docker Compose installed

Configuration

The following configuration spins up DynamoDB Local, DynamoDB Admin, ElasticMQ, and the ElasticMQ UI.

Connection details:

• DynamoDB endpoint: http://localhost:8000
• SQS endpoint: http://localhost:9324
• DynamoDB Admin: http://localhost:8001
• ElasticMQ UI: http://localhost:3000
• Region: us-east-1
• Credentials: any dummy values (for example local / local)

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  dynamodb:
    image: amazon/dynamodb-local:latest
    user: root
    command: '-jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb -dbPath /home/dynamodblocal/data'
    ports:
      - '8000:8000'
    volumes:
      - dynamodb_data:/home/dynamodblocal/data
  dynamodb-admin:
    image: aaronshaf/dynamodb-admin:latest
    ports:
      - '8001:8001'
    environment:
      DYNAMO_ENDPOINT: http://dynamodb:8000
      AWS_REGION: us-east-1
      AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: local
      AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: local
    depends_on:
      - dynamodb
  elasticmq:
    image: softwaremill/elasticmq-native:latest
    ports:
      - '9324:9324'
    volumes:
      - ./elasticmq.conf:/opt/elasticmq.conf
      - elasticmq_data:/data
  elasticmq-ui:
    image: softwaremill/elasticmq-ui:latest
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'
    environment:
      SQS_ENDPOINT: http://elasticmq:9324
    depends_on:
      - elasticmq
volumes:
  dynamodb_data:
  elasticmq_data:

ElasticMQ loads queue definitions from an elasticmq.conf file included in the demo.

Run the following command to spin up the containers.

docker compose up -d

Disclaimer

ElasticMQ provides an SQS-compatible API, but it is not AWS SQS. DynamoDB Local also differs from managed DynamoDB (for example capacity modes, streams, TTL, and global tables). Use these containers for local development and integration tests, not as production substitutes.

Demo

Docker Compose files and scripts for this post live in the dynamodb-sqs-docker-compose folder. Get access via code demos.