Pricing
OpenClaw is free and open source. Your only costs are hosting and AI API usage.
Unlike most AI platforms that lock you into expensive subscriptions, OpenClaw lets you bring your own API keys and choose exactly where to host. You can run entirely for free using local models with Ollama on your Mac, or spend as little as $10 per month on a VPS with a budget API. Below we break down exactly what each setup costs so you can pick the right plan for your needs and budget.
Typical Monthly Costs
Here are three common setups our users run, from completely free to a balanced quality-and-cost option. Each scenario includes real hosting and API costs so you know exactly what to expect before you start.
Run on your own Mac with Ollama for completely free AI.
- • Mac Mini (one-time cost)
- • Ollama: Free
- • Electricity: ~$5
Cheap VPS with affordable API model.
- • Hetzner VPS: €4/mo
- • GPT-4o mini: ~$5/mo
Good balance of quality and cost.
- • VPS: $6/mo
- • Claude Sonnet: ~$15-20/mo
AI Model Pricing (per 1M tokens)
OpenClaw works with every major AI provider. Prices below are per one million tokens — roughly 750,000 words of text. Pick the model that matches your quality requirements and budget. You can switch models anytime without changing your setup.
| Provider | Model | Input | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Claude Sonnet 4.5Recommended | $3.00 | $15.00 | Best quality, most capable |
| Anthropic | Claude Haiku 4.5 | $0.80 | $4.00 | Fast and affordable |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o | $2.50 | $10.00 | Multimodal, good all-around |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | Budget friendly |
| Gemini 2.0 Flash | Free tier | 1M context | Free tier available | |
| Ollama | Llama 3.3 / Mistral | Free | Forever | 100% local & private |
Average personal usage: 5-20M tokens/month (~$5-20 for Claude Sonnet)
VPS Hosting Options
If you do not want to run OpenClaw on your own machine, a cheap virtual private server works great. All providers below have been tested with OpenClaw and can handle typical personal usage without any performance issues.
| Provider | Price | Specs | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HetznerBest Value | €3.79/mo | 2 vCPU, 2GB RAM | EU | Best value |
| Contabo | €4.99/mo | 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM | EU/US | Most resources |
| Vultr | $6/mo | 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM | Global | Many locations |
| DigitalOcean | $6/mo | 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM | Global | Beginner friendly |
| AWS Lightsail | $5/mo | 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM | Global | Enterprise option |
Ready to Get Started?
Choose your platform and start running OpenClaw today.