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GDS K S
GDS K S

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I Tried OpenClaw, The 'Free' AI Agent. Here's My $500 Reality Check.

#ai #openai #tutorial #programming

OpenClaw has 124,000 GitHub stars. Every AI influencer is hyping it. "It's open-source! It's free! It's the future!"

I believed them. My wallet didn't.

I spent a weekend setting up OpenClaw. What I discovered will save you hundreds of dollars — or cost you thousands if you ignore it.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    THE HYPE vs REALITY                  │
├────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┤
│       WHAT THEY SAY    │       WHAT IT COSTS            │
├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│  "It's open source!"   │   Software: $0                 │
│  "It's free!"          │   API tokens: $50-500+/mo      │
│  "Just install & go!"  │   VPS: $23-70/mo               │
├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│       TOTAL: FREE      │   TOTAL: $100-500+/month       │
└────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘
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What The Hype Promised Me

You've seen the demos. You've watched the YouTube tutorials. OpenClaw (formerly MoltBot, formerly Clawdbot) looks like the future:

  • 🚀 "It codes entire features while you sleep"
  • 🤖 "It monitors your systems and alerts you automatically"
  • 💬 "It responds to your Telegram like a real assistant"
  • 🔥 "It creates PRs, reviews code, browses the web"

The influencers made it look effortless. MIT licensed. Free. Just install and go.

Here's what nobody showed you: The software is free. Running it costs more than your Netflix, Spotify, and gym membership combined.

The Real Cost Breakdown

The "Free" Part ✅

Component Cost
OpenClaw software $0 (MIT license)
Cloudflare Tunnel $0
LiteLLM Proxy $0

The Not-Free Part 💸

Component Cost
VPS (Azure/DigitalOcean) $23-70/month
API tokens $50-500+/month

The API Bill (Where It Gets Real)

Model Input Output Reality
GPT-4o-mini $0.15/M $0.60/M Cheap but USELESS for agents
GPT-4o $2.50/M $10/M Minimum viable quality
Claude Sonnet 4.5 $3/M $15/M Good balance
Claude Opus 4.5 $5/M $25/M What the demos actually use

What Real Users Actually Spend

These aren't hypotheticals. These are documented cases:

Federico Viticci (MacStories)

180 million tokens in first month = ~$3,600

Random user on X

Runaway automation loop = $200 in a single day

The MoltMaxxing viral post

"OpusMaxxing" minimum for real utility = $200/month baseline

The Hidden Feature That Burned $128/Month

This is where OpenClaw gets dangerous. And nobody in those tutorials mentions it.

Traditional AI (ChatGPT, Claude):

You ask → It answers → Done
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OpenClaw with Heartbeat/Cron:

It wakes up → Checks things → Reasons → Messages you → Sleeps → Repeat every N minutes → Forever
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Let's Do The Math

Scenario: Simple monitoring cron (every 5 minutes)

Per check:
├── System prompt      ~1,000 tokens
├── Context recall     ~2,000 tokens
├── Reasoning          ~500 tokens
└── Response           ~200 tokens
────────────────────────────────────
Total                  ~3,700 tokens

Per day (288 checks):
288 × 3,700 = 1,065,600 tokens

Per month:
~32 million tokens

Cost at GPT-4o rates ($2.50 in / $10 out):
├── Input (80%):   25.6M × $2.50/M = $64
└── Output (20%):  6.4M × $10/M    = $64
────────────────────────────────────────────
Total: ~$128/month FOR ONE CRON JOB 🔥
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Now imagine you have:

  • 📧 Email monitoring
  • 💬 Slack watching
  • 🐙 GitHub issue polling
  • 🖥️ Server health checks
  • 📈 Stock price alerts

Each one burns tokens. Every minute. Forever.

The "Is It Really Open Source?" Question

Let me be clear: OpenClaw is genuinely open source.

But so is a car engine. The engine is free. The fuel isn't.

"Open source AI agents" are a vehicle for selling API tokens.

Every major AI agent project:

  • ✅ Software: Free
  • 💰 Requires: Expensive LLM APIs
  • 📤 Result: You're paying Anthropic/OpenAI, not the project

This isn't a criticism. It's how the economics work. But it's rarely stated this clearly.

I Tried To Be Smart. The Cheap Model Made Me Look Stupid.

GPT-4o-mini is 17x cheaper than GPT-4o. Big brain move, right? I'd save hundreds.

What worked:

  • ✅ Basic chat
  • ✅ Simple questions
  • ✅ Status checks

What broke everything:

I asked OpenClaw to work on a TypeScript project. Build errors appeared:

error TS2304: Cannot find name 'HeadersInit'
error TS2749: 'TaskStatus' refers to a value, but is being used as a type
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GPT-4o-mini's response: Reported the errors. Gave up. 🤷

The fixes were trivial:

  1. HeadersInit is a DOM type, not available in Node.js → use Record<string, string>
  2. TaskStatus is a const object → use TaskStatusType (the derived type)

Any intermediate developer would fix these in 60 seconds. Mini couldn't reason through them.

I burned 5 failed runs worth of tokens before upgrading to GPT-4o, which fixed it in one shot.

The "cheap" model cost me more.

openclaw-realtiy

The MoltMaxxing Truth

A viral post on X captured it perfectly:

"If you're using OpenClaw with anything less than Claude Opus 4.5, you're not getting 'a slightly worse MoltBot.' You're getting 40-95% of its capabilities."

Model Comparison (Real Testing)

Model Quality Notes
Qwen3 30B (local) 💀 "The soul has left the body"
Kimi K2.5 85-90% Still needs hand-holding
GPT-5.2-codex 95% Chooses "procedurally correct" over "obviously effective"
Claude Opus 4.5 ✅ 100% Actually works as advertised

Their conclusion:

"MoltMaxxing only works if you're OpusMaxxing."

What $200/Month Actually Buys You

Option What You Get Hidden Costs
ChatGPT Pro ($200/mo) Unlimited GPT-5 chat No agents, no automation
Claude Max ($200/mo) 20x Pro usage Rate limits still exist
OpenClaw + Opus (~$200/mo) Full autonomy, cron jobs Can spike to $500+
OpenClaw + GPT-4o (~$130/mo) 90% capability Fails on complex tasks
OpenClaw + Mini (~$30/mo) Fancy chatbot Useless for real work

"Just Run It Locally Bro" — The $6,000 Cope

You've seen this take in every Reddit thread and YouTube comment.

Mac Mini M4 (16GB) — $600

Spec Reality
Can run Qwen 7B, Llama 8B
Quality GPT-3.5 tier at best
Verdict Barely functional for agents

Mac Mini M4 (24GB) — $800

Spec Reality
Can run Qwen 14B
Quality Below GPT-4o
Verdict "It works" but limited

Mac Studio M2 Ultra (64GB) — $4,000

Spec Reality
Can run Qwen 30B, Llama 70B
Quality ~80% of GPT-4o
Verdict Usable but not Opus-tier

Mac Studio M2 Ultra (128GB) — $6,000

Spec Reality
Can run Larger models
Quality Approaching GPT-4o
Verdict High latency, still not Opus

Plus: ~$10-15/month electricity running 24/7

The Breakeven Math

  • < 100 hours/month → Cloud wins
  • > 200 hours/month → Local might make sense
  • Need Opus-tier → Cloud is your only option

OpenRouter: The Middle Path?

OpenRouter lets you access multiple providers with one API:

Model Price (in/out) Quality
Claude Opus 4.5 $5/$25 per M 100%
Claude Sonnet 4.5 $3/$15 per M 90%
Kimi K2.5 ~$2/$8 per M 85-90%
Deepseek V3 ~$0.50/$2 per M Budget tier

The catch: OpenRouter doesn't mark up prices, but you're still paying API rates. There's no magic discount.

My Actual Monthly Bill

After all experimentation, here's what I run:

# My OpenClaw Setup

infrastructure:
  azure_vm: $23/month  # 8hr/day usage
  cloudflare: $0

model:
  provider: Azure OpenAI
  model: GPT-4o
  tokens: 50-80M/month
  cost: ~$80-120/month

integrations:
  telegram: $0
  discord: $0
  github_webhooks: $0

# ─────────────────────────
total: ~$100-150/month
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Is it worth it? For me, yes. It handles tasks that would take hours.

Would I recommend it? Only if you:

  • 💰 Have $100+/month budget for AI
  • 🧠 Accept you need GPT-4o or better
  • ⏰ Understand cron jobs multiply costs
  • 😅 Won't cry when a loop burns $50 overnight

So... Should You Even Bother In 2026?

The MoltMaxxing author dropped a truth bomb:

"I'd bet we eventually see a proper 'AI bot / agent plan' tier with higher limits designed for exactly this use case."

They're probably right. We'll likely see:

  • 💳 $300-500/month "agent tiers" from Anthropic/OpenAI
  • 📊 Better rate limits for automation
  • 📉 Competition driving prices down

My decision: I'm pausing aggressive AI agent work to ship my mobile app. When Opus-tier models are accessible at $100/month with proper automation support, I'll be back.

Until then: Ship products, not demos.

Key Takeaways

What They Say What's Actually True
"It's open source" Software free, API bills real
"GPT-4o-mini works" For chat. Not for agents.
"Run it locally" $4,000+ for 80% quality
"Like having an assistant" Only at $200+/month
"The future of work" The expensive future

The Uncomfortable Truth Nobody Will Tell You

OpenClaw is genuinely impressive software. The team shipped something remarkable.

But here's what every tutorial, every demo, every "I built an AI agent in 10 minutes" video leaves out:

They're all running Claude Opus 4.5.

When you try the same thing with the "budget-friendly" option they never mention, the magic vanishes. The assistant becomes a broken chatbot. The autonomous agent becomes an expensive autocomplete.

That's not OpenClaw's fault. That's just AI economics in 2026.

The model IS the product. The software is just packaging.

Resources

Have you run OpenClaw with different models? Drop your experience in the comments.

Follow @thegdsks for more honest takes on AI infrastructure. No hype, just numbers.

Top comments (1)

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thang_hoangnguyenmanh_2 profile image
Thang Hoang Nguyen Manh •

Exactly, the API provider costs are quite high. But there's a workaround: you can use Codex or Gemini CLI with OpenClaw by just signing up for the $20 plan. You hit the nail on the head, though—the price of maintaining a 'personal assistant' might exceed the cost of hiring a real person