Is OpenClaw’s API Too Expensive? Try OpenClaw + Ollama

OpenClaw is an open-source agent that is free to download and install. However, using it can burn through tokens at an alarming rate. The costs don’t just come from core model responses; they also stem from web reading, memory retrieval, summarization, tool calls, and the workspace files and bootstrap configurations packed into system prompts. As the context length grows, the bill hits you like a sudden one-two punch to the wallet. Running OpenClaw with Claude Sonnet - accumulating 10M input and 10M output tokens a month - can easily cost nearly a hundred dollars.