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Frequently Asked Questions

General​

What is OpenClaw?​

OpenClaw is a free, open-source, autonomous AI agent that runs locally on your machine. It connects LLMs to your files, shell, browser, and messaging apps to automate tasks. It has 182,000+ GitHub stars as of February 2026.

Is OpenClaw free?​

OpenClaw itself is free (MIT license). However, you pay for LLM API usage if using cloud providers. Users have reported costs ranging from $5/day to $3,600/month depending on usage intensity. Running local models eliminates API costs entirely.

Why was it renamed twice?​

  1. Clawdbot (Nov 2025) — Original name
  2. Moltbot (Jan 27, 2026) — Renamed after Anthropic filed trademark complaints ("Clawd" was too close to "Claude")
  3. OpenClaw (Jan 30, 2026) — Renamed because "Moltbot never quite rolled off the tongue"

This was the fastest triple rebrand in open-source history — all three names within a single week.

Who created OpenClaw?​

Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer and founder of PSPDFKit. He's described his development philosophy as "shipping code he doesn't read" — having made 6,600 commits in January 2026 alone using AI coding tools.

What is Moltbook?​

Moltbook is a separate social network (created by Matt Schlicht) where AI agents autonomously post, comment, and vote. It grew to 1.6 million registered agents (though most were bots, with only ~17,000 human users). Andrej Karpathy called it "the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing." It suffered a major database breach in January 2026.

Security​

Is OpenClaw safe to use?​

OpenClaw is powerful but carries significant risks. It has had:

Follow the Security Hardening guide before deploying. Gartner has recommended enterprises block it entirely.

Can someone hack me through OpenClaw?​

Yes, if you:

  • Expose the gateway to the internet (bind to 0.0.0.0)
  • Install unverified skills from ClawHub
  • Run an outdated version with known CVEs
  • Don't restrict channel access

Even localhost instances were vulnerable to CVE-2026-25253 via browser pivot attacks.

Does OpenClaw send my data to the cloud?​

  • Memory, files, and config: Stay local on your machine
  • LLM prompts: Sent to your chosen cloud provider for processing
  • Local models: Nothing leaves your machine at all

Cost​

How much does it cost to run?​

Real-world reported costs:

UserUsageMonthly Cost
Light userCLI chat, occasional tasks$30–150
Moderate userHeartbeat + 1-2 channels$150–450
Heavy user (Federico Viticci)Full automation, 1.8M tokens$3,600
German magazine c't testFull-day testing$100+ in one day
Heartbeat overnightJust asking "Is it daytime yet?"$18.75 overnight

Key cost drivers: context accumulation (session history grows indefinitely), heartbeat (runs even when idle), and autonomous multi-step tool use.

How do I reduce costs?​

  1. Use Haiku for heartbeat, Opus only for complex tasks
  2. Increase heartbeat interval (60 min instead of 30)
  3. Set quiet hours to stop heartbeat during sleep
  4. Use local models for $0 API costs
  5. Keep sessions short to limit context accumulation

Can I use it without an API key?​

Yes, using local models via Ollama or vLLM. No API key or internet connection required.

Which LLM should I use?​

Use CaseRecommendation
Best qualityClaude Opus 4.6
Good balanceClaude Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-4o
Cheapest cloudClaude Haiku 4.5
Free (local)Llama 3.1 70B via Ollama
Coding tasksClaude Opus or GPT-5.3-Codex

Technical​

Does it work on Windows?​

Yes, via WSL2 or native Node.js. WSL2 is recommended for the best experience.

Can I run it on a cloud server?​

Yes. DigitalOcean, Cloudflare (via Moltworker), and others offer managed hosting. But never expose the gateway to the public internet — bind to localhost and use SSH tunneling or a VPN for remote access.

Can I run multiple instances?​

Yes, on different ports:

# Instance 1 (work)
OPENCLAW_PORT=18789 OPENCLAW_HOME=~/.openclaw-work openclaw gateway

# Instance 2 (personal)
OPENCLAW_PORT=18790 OPENCLAW_HOME=~/.openclaw-personal openclaw gateway

What is Cloudflare Moltworker?​

An open-source project by Cloudflare to run OpenClaw on Cloudflare Workers with sandboxed execution, browser rendering, and R2 storage — approximately $5/month without needing dedicated hardware.

Ecosystem​

What is ClawHub?​

ClawHub is OpenClaw's community skill marketplace. It was the target of a major malicious skill campaign but now uses VirusTotal scanning for all published skills.

What is Clawery?​

Clawery is a separate enterprise-focused product offering managed OpenClaw with additional security, compliance, audit logging, and container-isolated skills.

Can I contribute?​

Yes! See Contributing to OpenClaw and Contributing to these docs.

See Also​