OpenClaw

What is OpenClaw?

Self-hosted assistant gateway for WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Discord.

Who is OpenClaw best for?

OpenClaw is best for people comfortable with a terminal who want a personal AI assistant they message from chat apps.

• An assistant inside your chat apps

  Message it from WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, iMessage or any of its 29 channels, in direct messages or group chats.

• Keeping data on your own machine

  Memory, skills and settings live on your computer rather than a vendor's cloud, and the only thing sent home by default is a daily version check you can switch off.

• Reusing a subscription you already pay for

  Setup can pick up an existing Claude Code or Codex login or a provider API key, and local models work too.

• Hands-on personal automation

  It browses the web, fills in forms, reads and writes files and runs shell commands, with full access or inside a sandbox.

How much does OpenClaw cost?

OpenClaw is free and open source under the MIT license, with no subscription, hosted tier or paid edition; the only cost is the AI model you connect to it.

OpenClaw has no pricing page because nothing is for sale: the OpenClaw Foundation, a US non-profit funded by donors, publishes all of it under the MIT license. Model usage is paid through your own provider account or the Claude Code or Codex login you connect, unless you run a local model. Full pricing on openclaw.ai. We checked these prices on 27 Sep 2026.

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Is OpenClaw open source?

Yes. OpenClaw's code is public under the MIT licence, so you can run it on your own server.

Host it on a serverHostinger, DigitalOcean, Railway, Elestio, Vultr and Akamai Cloud set it up on a server for you with a one-click install.

Hosting with

What are the best OpenClaw alternatives?

OpenClaw is an open source alternative to Base44 Superagent, Gemini Spark, Kimi Claw and Manus. Hermes Agent and nanobot do the same job and are open source too.

Base44 SuperagentFree

Base44's always-on AI agent that acts across your tools and reports back on WhatsApp or Slack.

Gemini SparkPaid

Google's 24/7 personal agent for tasks, schedules and web errands.

Kimi ClawPaid

Moonshot's managed OpenClaw agent on desktop, cloud or Android.

ManusFree

A general agent that researches, codes and builds slides end to end.

Hermes AgentOpen Source

Open-source personal agent with memory, skills and messaging.

nanobotOpen Source

Personal AI agent you host yourself, reachable from a browser, terminal or chat apps like Telegram.

Questions about OpenClaw