How much does OpenClaw cost per month?

OpenClaw itself is free and open source. Your costs come entirely from LLM API usage. Most users pay between $5 and $80 per month depending on their model choice and usage volume. Light users on cheap models like Gemini Flash or Claude Haiku spend under $10/month. Heavy users on Claude Opus with aut

Is OpenClaw cheaper than ChatGPT Plus?

It depends on how much you use it. If you send fewer than 15-25 messages per day, ChatGPT Plus at $20/month is usually cheaper because you pay a flat rate regardless of usage. If you use cheap models like Haiku or Gemini Flash, OpenClaw is cheaper even at high volumes -- often under $10/month for 50

Why is my OpenClaw bill so high?

The three most common causes of unexpectedly high bills are: (1) running a premium model like Claude Opus as your default for all tasks, (2) leaving heartbeat mode enabled at a short interval on an expensive model, and (3) long conversation contexts that send thousands of accumulated tokens with eve

Can I use OpenClaw for free?

Yes, by running it with Ollama and a local LLM. Ollama is free, and models like Llama 3.1 8B run on most modern laptops with 8GB+ of RAM. The quality is noticeably lower than cloud models like Claude Sonnet or GPT-4o, but for basic tasks -- casual chat, simple Q&A, formatting -- local models work pe

What is the cheapest cloud model for OpenClaw?

Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash at $0.075 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens. At typical OpenClaw usage (30 messages per day), Gemini Flash costs roughly $1.50 per month. GPT-4o Mini ($0.15/$0.60) and Claude Haiku 3.5 ($0.25/$1.25) are close behind. All three are adequate for rou

How do I track my OpenClaw spending in real time?

OpenClaw does not have a built-in cost dashboard, but you can track spending through your API provider's console. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all provide real-time usage dashboards and support spending alerts. Additionally, the community has built third-party plugins like openclaw-cost-tracker tha

Does OpenClaw charge for tool usage?

OpenClaw itself does not charge for anything. However, tool usage (web browsing, file operations, code execution) increases the tokens consumed per interaction because tool inputs and outputs are included in the conversation context sent to the LLM. A simple message might use 2,000-3,000 tokens, but

OpenClaw Pricing 2026: Free Tier vs $20-$200/Month Real Costs

OpenClaw is free open-source software, but the AI provider bill is the real cost. Typical users spend $20-$200/month on Claude, GPT-5, or Gemini. Power users hit $500-$3,600. Includes the monthly cost calculator and how to cut bills by 60% with multi-model routing.

Published February 26, 2026

11 min read

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