How Much Does It Cost to Run OpenClaw? (Real Numbers from Real Users)

OpenClaw is 100% free and open-source — MIT licensed, no subscription, no premium tier, no paywall. The real cost is AI model API usage: $5-30/month for most users. But one developer shared spending $623 in a single month. Here's how to make sure you're on the cheap end of that spectrum.

These numbers come from The CAIO's pricing guide, Hostinger's cost analysis, eesel.ai's research, and WenHao Yu's deploy cost guide — all published in February 2026.

The Three Cost Components

1. AI Model API Costs (The Big One)

OpenClaw doesn't include its own AI model. It connects to external LLMs — Claude, GPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, or local models via Ollama. You pay the provider directly.

According to The CAIO's pricing guide (backed by real user data):

Usage Level	Messages/Day	Monthly Cost	Typical User
Light	10-50	$5-10	Personal assistant, simple automation
Regular	50-200	$15-30	Small business, team assistant
Power	200-500	$40-100	Active community bot, multi-channel
Heavy	500+	$100-800+	High-volume support, agency work

These assume Claude Sonnet as the model. Using Haiku cuts costs by 60-70%. Using Opus roughly doubles them.

The $623 horror story: eesel.ai reported a developer whose agent's API usage spiraled because of uncontrolled reasoning on complex tasks. This is avoidable (see tips below).

2. Hosting Infrastructure

Option A: Run on your own machine ($0)

Most people start here. Mac, Linux, or Windows — just install OpenClaw and run it. Your agent goes offline when your machine sleeps, but for personal use that's often fine.

Option B: Cloud VPS ($0-8/month)

WenHao Yu's deploy cost guide mapped the cheapest options:

Oracle Cloud Free Tier: $0/month (ARM, 4 cores, 24GB RAM — seriously)
Hetzner CX22: €4.50/month (~$5)
DigitalOcean Basic: $6/month (also offers 1-Click Deploy)
AWS Lightsail: $5/month

A basic VPS with 2GB RAM is enough. Budget 4GB+ if you use browser automation (Chromium is memory-hungry).

Option C: Managed hosting

Platforms like Lobsterlair handle infrastructure entirely — server management, updates, monitoring, pre-configured setups. No SSH, no server maintenance, no 3 AM debugging.

3. Hidden Costs Most Guides Skip

Skill-specific APIs:

Image generation (DALL-E): ~$0.04-0.08/image
Web search (Brave API): Free tier (2K queries/month), $5/month for more
Speech-to-text (Whisper): Free locally, API if cloud
Social scheduling (Mixpost): Self-hosted = free

Browser automation RAM: Chromium needs ~500MB-2GB depending on usage. If your VPS only has 2GB total, this matters.

Token waste from bad prompts: The single biggest hidden cost. A poorly configured agent that sends your entire MEMORY.md (could be 50KB+) with every single API call will burn through tokens fast. Keeping context lean is an art.

How to Run OpenClaw for $0

Yes, actually $0:

Run on your own machine — No hosting cost
Use Ollama with a local model — No API cost
Use free-tier skills — Most skills are free

The tradeoff: local models are significantly less capable than Claude or GPT-4o. Fine for simple automation, not great for complex reasoning or content generation. But it's a legitimate way to learn the platform before committing money.

10 Tips to Control Costs

Use the right model for the job. Don't run Opus for simple cron jobs. Set model overrides per task — Sonnet for daily checks, Opus only for complex reasoning.
Set timeout limits on cron jobs. A runaway task without a timeout can burn through your monthly budget in hours.
Keep memory files lean. Review MEMORY.md regularly. Remove outdated info. Every byte gets sent with every API call.
Use bestEffort on cron delivery. Failed deliveries that retry waste tokens.
Start with Sonnet. For 90% of use cases, Claude Sonnet is more than good enough. Upgrade to Opus only for specific tasks.
Batch operations. Instead of 10 separate cron jobs, have one agent turn that handles multiple checks.
Cache web content. If your agent checks the same websites daily, save results to files instead of re-fetching and re-processing.
Monitor with codexbar or your provider dashboard. Know where your tokens go before the bill arrives.
Use thinking level overrides. Set thinking: off for simple tasks, thinking: low for moderate ones. Reserve high thinking for genuinely complex problems.
Review cron job frequency. Does that check really need to run every hour? Every 4 hours might be fine.

Cost Comparison: Self-Hosted vs Managed

	Self-hosted (VPS)	Own hardware	Managed (Lobsterlair)
Server	$0-8/month	$0	Included
Setup time	2-5 hours	1-2 hours	5 minutes
Maintenance	You fix it	You fix it	We handle it
API costs	You pay directly	You pay directly	Included or BYO key
Updates	Manual	Manual	Automatic
Skills setup	Manual per skill	Manual per skill	Pre-configured
Total	$5-40/month	$5-30/month	Subscription

Is It Worth It?

Consider what you're replacing:

A virtual assistant: $500-2000/month
A social media manager: $1000-3000/month
A junior developer (part-time): $2000+/month
Content writing service: $500-1500/month

An OpenClaw agent doing parts of all of these for $15-30/month is absurdly cost-effective. The question isn't whether it's worth the money — it's whether it's worth your time to set up.

And if the answer to that is "no," that's what Lobsterlair is for. Skip the infrastructure, skip the config, skip the cost optimization — just pick a use case and go.