OpenClaw itself is free and open source. There is no subscription, no license fee, and no usage cap. You pay only for the AI API calls you make to your chosen provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or NVIDIA). Typical personal use costs $1–10 per month.

How much does OpenClaw cost per month?

Costs depend on your AI provider and how much you use it. Light use (a few conversations per day) typically runs $1–5/month. Heavy use with daily briefings and frequent messaging typically runs $5–20/month. All costs go directly to your AI provider — OpenClaw itself charges nothing.

Does OpenClaw have a subscription?

No. OpenClaw has no subscription, no free tier, no pro tier, no account required. You install it, configure an API key from your chosen AI provider, and that's it. The only recurring cost is your AI provider's API usage.

Is OpenClaw Free? – HowOpenClaw

The short version

OpenClaw: $0. You pay only your AI provider for API calls.

Typical personal use: $1–5/month (light). $5–20/month (heavy with daily briefings). Zero if using Ollama locally.

OpenClaw is free and open source. There is no subscription, no license fee, no account required, and no usage limits imposed by OpenClaw itself.

You pay only for AI API calls — the requests OpenClaw makes to your chosen AI provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or NVIDIA) on your behalf.

Typical monthly costs

These are rough estimates based on personal use patterns:

Use pattern	Estimated cost
Light: a few messages per day, no automations	$1–3/month
Moderate: daily briefing + regular messaging	$5–10/month
Heavy: multiple automations, frequent use	$10–25/month

Costs vary based on:

Model choice — GPT-4o costs more per token than Claude Haiku; use a smaller model to reduce costs
Context length — longer SOUL.md and MEMORY.md files cost more per request
Automation frequency — daily briefings and cron jobs add to your total

Which AI provider is cheapest?

Provider	Model	Relative cost
Anthropic	claude-haiku-4-5	Low
OpenAI	gpt-4o-mini	Low
NVIDIA	Meta-Llama-3.1-8B	Low
Anthropic	claude-sonnet-4-6	Medium
OpenAI	gpt-4o	Medium–High
Anthropic	claude-opus-4-6	High

NVIDIA API pricing

NVIDIA offers competitive pricing for open-source models through its hosted inference service. Models like Llama 3.1 typically cost less per token than proprietary alternatives, making them ideal for cost-conscious deployments. NVIDIA also includes free tier usage for eligible models.

For personal daily use, Claude Haiku, GPT-4o-mini, or NVIDIA's Llama models provide a good balance of quality and cost. The quality difference for everyday tasks (briefings, reminders, questions) is minimal.

How to keep costs low

Use a smaller model for routine tasks. Set "model": "claude-haiku-4-5-20251001" in your config for everyday conversations and reserve larger models for when you need them.

Keep SOUL.md concise. Every conversation loads your SOUL.md as context. A 300-line SOUL.md costs significantly more per request than a 50-line one.

Trim MEMORY.md periodically. As MEMORY.md grows, so does the context loaded on each request. Review it monthly and remove entries that are no longer relevant.

Use suppressEmpty for automations. If an automation has nothing useful to say (no new emails, no calendar events), suppressEmpty: true skips the AI call entirely.

Compared to alternatives

Tool	Cost
OpenClaw	$0 + AI API usage ($1–20/month)
ChatGPT Plus	$20/month
Zapier Starter	$19.99/month
n8n Cloud	$20/month
OpenAI Assistants	API usage only (similar to OpenClaw)

OpenClaw's cost model is similar to building with the OpenAI Assistants API — you pay for tokens, not for the platform.

No account, no tracking

OpenClaw doesn't require an account, doesn't track usage, and doesn't have telemetry. The only external connections your installation makes are:

To your AI provider's API — when you send a message or an automation fires
To messaging platform APIs — when sending or receiving messages on Telegram, Slack, etc.

Nothing else leaves your machine.