About TaskCat
TaskCat tests AWS CloudFormation templates. It deploys your template in several AWS Regions and produces a report that grades each region as pass or fail, so you can see whether a template works wherever you intend to use it. The listing name Aws Ia refers to the aws-ia team that develops it.
You choose the regions and the number of Availability Zones to include and supply parameter values from your template. TaskCat is implemented as a Python class that you import, instantiate and run, which makes it straightforward to script and to fit into continuous integration. It was originally built by the aws-ia team to test templates that deploy workloads on AWS, and is available to anyone validating custom templates.
Documentation is hosted on GitHub Pages and the package is published on PyPI. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence.
Key features
- Deploys CloudFormation templates in multiple regions
- Pass or fail report for each region
- Configurable regions and Availability Zones
- Template parameter values supplied in tests
- Python class usable in scripts and CI
- Published on PyPI
Good fit for
- →Validating CloudFormation templates before release
- →Continuous integration for infrastructure templates
- Built with
- Python
- Tags
- cloudformation
- aws
- testing
- ci
- infrastructure-as-code
- python
- devops
TaskCat: questions and answers
- What is TaskCat used for?
- TaskCat is a Python tool that deploys AWS CloudFormation templates across multiple regions and reports pass or fail results for each one. It is a good fit for validating CloudFormation templates before release and continuous integration for infrastructure templates.
- Is TaskCat open source?
- Yes. TaskCat is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at aws-ia/taskcat and is written mainly in Python.
- Is TaskCat free?
- Yes. TaskCat is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- What are some alternatives to TaskCat?
- Similar open-source tools in the CI/CD & DevOps category include RunsOn, Ansible and Act. SaaS products in the same category include AWSCost, Travis CI and AWS CodeBuild.
- Is TaskCat actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to TaskCat was on 24 July 2026, and the latest release is 0.9.58, published on 28 January 2026. The project has 1.2k stars on GitHub.
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