Updated February 2026 — Latest pricing

How Much Does OpenClaw Cost?
Complete Breakdown 2026

Calculate your total OpenClaw costs including hosting, API usage, and additional services. From free setups to enterprise-grade deployments.

$0/month
Free Tier
Oracle Cloud + Groq
$10/month
Light Usage
Budget VPS + API
$25/month
Typical Setup
Good hosting + Claude
$50+/month
Heavy Usage
Multiple agents + premium

💰 Cost Calculator

💸 Detailed Cost Breakdown

🖥️ Hosting Costs

Oracle Cloud (Free)
Free Forever
FREE
Hetzner
$4.5/mo
BoostedHost
$4.99/mo
Hostinger
$5.99/mo
DigitalOcean
$6/mo
Railway (Usage-based)
Usage-based
$5/mo
Recommendation: Start with Oracle Cloud free tier, upgrade to Hostinger for production.

🤖 API Costs

Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Input: $3/1M tokens
Output: $15/1M tokens
GPT-4 Turbo
Input: $10/1M tokens
Output: $30/1M tokens
Groq Llama 3.1 70B
Input: $0.59/1M tokens
Output: $0.79/1M tokens
Free tier available
Typical usage: 50 messages/day = $5-15/month depending on provider.

⚙️ Additional Services

Telegram Premium Bot
FREE
Discord Premium
FREE
Custom Domain
$12/mo
SSL Certificate
FREE
Monitoring Service
$5/mo
Backup Service
$3/mo
Optional: Most services are free. Domain and monitoring recommended for production.

💡 Cost Optimization Tips

✅ Reduce API Costs

  • • Use Groq for simple, fast responses
  • • Implement response caching for repeated queries
  • • Reduce context window size when possible
  • • Use cheaper models for classification tasks
  • • Batch API requests where applicable
  • • Monitor usage with built-in analytics

✅ Reduce Hosting Costs

  • • Start with Oracle Cloud free tier
  • • Choose VPS over managed platforms for control
  • • Use European providers (Hetzner) for better rates
  • • Optimize Docker containers for lower memory usage
  • • Use spot instances for development/testing
  • • Consider annual billing for discounts

🔄 Alternative Strategies

  • • Run locally for development/testing
  • • Use local models (Ollama) for simple tasks
  • • Share hosting costs with team/friends
  • • Schedule agents to run only when needed
  • • Use webhooks instead of polling
  • • Implement intelligent routing between models

📊 Monitoring Costs

  • • Set up API usage alerts
  • • Monitor costs in OpenClaw dashboard
  • • Track costs per agent/skill
  • • Review monthly usage reports
  • • Set budget limits where possible
  • • Regular cost audits and optimization

🎯 Cost Optimization Strategy

Phase 1: Start with Oracle Cloud + Groq free tiers to learn and experiment ($0/month).

Phase 2: Upgrade to Hetzner VPS + Claude for better performance ($15-20/month).

Phase 3: Scale to premium hosting + multiple models for production ($30-50/month).

🎭 Common Usage Scenarios

🆓 Student / Learning

• Oracle Cloud (free)
• Groq free tier
• 20 messages/day
• Basic Telegram bot

💼 Small Business

• Hostinger VPS ($6)
• Claude API ($15)
• 100 messages/day
• Multiple channels
• Custom domain ($1)

🏢 Enterprise

• DigitalOcean ($20)
• Multiple APIs ($50)
• 500+ messages/day
• Team collaboration
• Monitoring & backups ($8)

Ready to Get Started?

Choose the setup that fits your budget and requirements. You can always start small and scale up.