Here's the money question. OpenClaw itself is free, but the LLM API calls are not. If you use Claude or GPT as your model, expect to spend between \250and$750permonthdependingonusage.Heavyuserswhorunautomations24/7$ land on the higher end.
You can cut costs by routing simple tasks to cheaper models (or local ones via Ollama) and saving expensive models for complex reasoning. I'll show you how to set up model routing rules in the configuration section. Some users report cutting their bill in half with this approach. Worth the effort, right?