How Much Does It Cost to Run OpenClaw (Clawdbot)? Full Pricing Breakdown

“Is OpenClaw free?” is the most common question I see in the OpenClaw Discord. The short answer: the software is free, but running it costs real money. After six months of daily use, I know exactly what it costs because I’ve tracked every dollar.

Here’s the full breakdown so you can budget before committing. If you’re still deciding whether OpenClaw is worth it at all, start with my honest review after 6 months.

The software: completely free

OpenClaw (Clawdbot) is open source. You download it, install it, done. No subscription fee, no license, no hidden charges for the software itself.

What you pay for is everything around it: the hardware to run it on, the AI model that powers the thinking, and the electricity to keep it running 24/7. Let me break down each piece.

Hardware costs: the one-time investment

You need something to run OpenClaw on. Here are the realistic options with what I’d recommend for each situation:

• Mac Mini M4 (16GB) – $499: The sweet spot for 24/7 dedicated use. This is what most serious users end up buying. I wrote a complete Mac Mini setup guide for this exact use case.
• Mac Mini M4 Pro (24GB) – $1,399: For heavy workloads or running multiple bot instances. Overkill for most people.
• Used Mac Mini M2 – $300-400: Budget 24/7 option. Works perfectly well. Check Apple’s refurbished store or eBay.
• Your existing Mac or PC – $0: Fine for testing and light use. The catch is it needs to stay on.
• Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) – $80: Experimenting only. Performance is noticeably worse and you lose macOS integrations.
• Cloud VPS (Linux) – $10-30/month: No hardware to buy or manage. Good if you don’t want a box sitting on your desk.

Most serious users end up on a Mac Mini. It’s quiet, uses minimal electricity, and handles OpenClaw without breaking a sweat. The base M4 with 16GB RAM is more than enough for a single bot instance with a dozen skills running.

If you’re just testing, use whatever computer you already have. You can always migrate to dedicated hardware later. The workspace folder moves easily between machines.

AI model costs: where most of your money goes

This is the big variable. OpenClaw uses Claude models from Anthropic, and you pay per token (roughly per word processed). There are two ways to pay.

Option A: Claude API (pay per use)

You load credits onto your Anthropic account and pay for exactly what you use. Here’s what real-world usage looks like:

• Light use (a few messages/day): $15-30/month. Casual personal assistant stuff – quick questions, reminders, weather checks.
• Moderate use (regular daily conversations): $40-80/month. Active personal assistant with cron jobs, some research tasks, regular back-and-forth.
• Heavy use (constant + overnight work): $80-150/month. Business use, running automations, long research sessions, content creation.
• Very heavy (multiple projects, all day): $150-250+/month. Multi-business management, frequent Opus usage, lots of concurrent sessions.

My personal usage runs $80-120/month. I use OpenClaw heavily for multiple businesses, overnight work sessions, and constant communication throughout the day. Some months spike higher when I’m doing big research projects that need Opus.

Option B: Claude Pro/Max subscription + OAuth

Instead of paying per API call, you can subscribe to Claude Pro ($20/month) or Claude Max ($100-200/month) and authenticate OpenClaw via OAuth. This gives you a predictable monthly bill.

• Claude Pro ($20/month): Good for moderate use. You’ll hit rate limits with heavy use – the limits are generous for casual use but power users will feel constrained.
• Claude Max ($100/month): Higher limits. Works for most power users who want predictable billing.
• Claude Max ($200/month): Highest consumer tier. Rarely needed unless you’re running multiple intensive sessions daily.

Which payment method should you choose?

Here’s how I think about it. If you use OpenClaw moderately – a few conversations a day, some cron jobs – Claude Pro at $20/month is the cheapest option by far. If you’re a heavy user pushing it all day, API pay-per-use gives you no rate limits but your costs will vary month to month. If you want both heavy use and predictable billing, Claude Max is the right call.

I started with Claude Pro, hit rate limits within the first week, and switched to API pay-per-use. Haven’t looked back. The flexibility is worth the unpredictability for my usage pattern.

Electricity: barely worth mentioning

A Mac Mini M4 running 24/7 uses about 5-15 watts at idle, spiking to 30-40 watts under load. At average US electricity rates, that works out to $3-7 per month. It’s less than running a standard light bulb. This is not the line item you need to worry about.

Internet: you already have it

OpenClaw uses minimal bandwidth. Text-based API calls are tiny. Even with heavy use, you’re looking at maybe 50-200 MB per day. Your existing internet connection handles this without breaking a sweat.

Real monthly totals: what people actually pay

I asked around in the OpenClaw community and combined that with my own tracking. Here are realistic monthly costs for different use levels.

Budget setup: $20-25/month

• Your existing hardware (no additional cost)
• Claude Pro subscription: $20/month
• Light daily use within rate limits
• Best for: personal use, trying it out, casual users

Standard setup: $60-100/month

• Mac Mini M4 (amortized: ~$14/month over 3 years)
• Claude API moderate use: $40-80/month
• Electricity: ~$5/month
• Best for: active personal assistant, small business use

Power user setup: $100-175/month

• Mac Mini M4 (amortized: ~$14/month)
• Claude API heavy use: $80-150/month
• Electricity: ~$5/month
• Best for: business automation, multi-project management, content creators

Is OpenClaw actually worth the cost?

Compare these numbers to what you’d pay for alternatives:

• ChatGPT Plus ($20/month): A chatbot in a browser. No persistent memory across sessions, no automation, no messaging integration, no background tasks.
• Claude Pro direct ($20/month): Same deal. Better model, same limitations as a web-only tool.
• Human virtual assistant ($500-2,000+/month): Limited hours, time zone constraints, training needed, needs managing.
• OpenClaw standard ($60-100/month): 24/7 availability, persistent memory that compounds, automation, always available, gets better over time.

The math works if you value your time at more than about $10/hour. I estimate Jarvis saves me 15-20 hours per week on tasks I’d otherwise do manually – research, scheduling, content drafting, email monitoring, file management. Even at a conservative $25/hour, that’s $1,500-2,000/month in time savings for about $100 in costs.

The real value though isn’t just the hours saved. It’s the things I wouldn’t have done at all. I wouldn’t manually check my email every 30 minutes. I wouldn’t create daily briefings for myself. I wouldn’t organize my notes or track my projects as diligently. OpenClaw does all of this in the background without me thinking about it. You can set up email monitoring and auto-replies as one example of this kind of passive automation.

Hidden costs people forget about

Your time setting it up. Budget a weekend for initial setup and a few weeks of refinement. Your time has value, even if it doesn’t show up on a bill. The complete setup guide can cut this significantly, but there’s still a learning curve.

Troubleshooting time. Things break. APIs go down. Configs get corrupted after updates. You’ll spend some hours debugging, especially in the first month. Less over time, but it never hits zero completely.

Skill-specific costs. Some skills connect to paid services. If you use a Google Workspace skill, you need Google Workspace. If you use WordPress tools, you need hosting. These aren’t OpenClaw costs, but they add up if you’re integrating with paid platforms.

Model experimentation. When you first start, you’ll try different models and prompts to find what works. This burns through more tokens than steady-state usage. My first month cost about 40% more than my average month because I was testing everything.

Feature creep. Once you see what OpenClaw can do, you’ll want it to do more. More cron jobs, more skills, more automation. Each addition is small, but they compound. This is actually a good thing – it means you’re getting value – but budget for growing usage over the first 3-6 months.

How to keep costs down

Track your API costs weekly for the first month. Check your Anthropic dashboard (console.anthropic.com) every few days until you understand your usage pattern. I was surprised how quickly costs added up before I optimized my model choices.

Use the right model for the right task. Don’t use Opus for simple questions. Set Sonnet as your default and only switch to Opus for complex work. This single change cut my API bill by about 30%.

Be intentional with cron jobs. Each scheduled task makes API calls. If you set up 15 cron jobs that fire hourly, that’s 360 API calls per day just from automation. Ask yourself: does this really need to run every hour, or would every 4 hours work? Does it need Opus, or can Haiku handle it?

Keep conversations focused. Long, rambling conversations burn tokens fast. If you’re switching topics, start a new session instead of continuing a 50-message thread. The bot loses context in very long conversations anyway.

Clean up memory periodically. A bloated MEMORY.md gets included in every API call, increasing costs. Keep it focused on what your bot actually needs to know.

FAQ

Is OpenClaw completely free?

The software is free and open source. You pay for the AI model (Claude API or subscription) and hardware. Minimum realistic monthly cost is about $20 with Claude Pro on existing hardware.

Can I use a free AI model with OpenClaw?

OpenClaw primarily supports Claude models from Anthropic, which are paid. Some community integrations exist for other models, but Claude is the recommended and best-supported option.

How do I reduce my OpenClaw costs?

Use Claude Sonnet instead of Opus for daily tasks. Be selective with cron job frequency. Avoid unnecessarily long conversations. Use the cheapest model that gets the job done. Track your usage weekly.

Is it cheaper than hiring a virtual assistant?

Significantly. A human VA costs $500-2,000+/month for limited hours and specific time zones. OpenClaw costs $60-170/month and runs 24/7. The tradeoff is that OpenClaw requires initial setup time and can’t do everything a human can (physical tasks, phone calls, judgment calls that need emotional intelligence).

What if my costs spike unexpectedly?

Set spending limits on your Anthropic account at console.anthropic.com. You can set a hard monthly cap so you never get a surprise bill. I set mine to $200/month as a safety net and have never actually hit it.

Does the cost go down over time?

In my experience, costs stabilize after the first month. The initial experimentation phase is the most expensive. Once you’ve dialed in your model choices and cron job frequency, monthly costs become very predictable. Anthropic also tends to reduce per-token pricing over time as their models become more efficient.