Run OpenClaw Without Breaking the Bank: Best Value LLM in 2026 (Grok vs Claude vs Others)

Описание: OpenClaw (formerly ClawdBot/Moltbot) lets you pick ANY LLM for your autonomous AI agent—Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, AWS Nova, Moonshot Kimi, OpenAI GPT-OSS, and more via OpenRouter or direct APIs. But which one gives the BEST VALUE in 2026 without insane token bills eating your wallet during heavy agent loops, tool-calling, and long contexts?
In this video, I break down:

All major LLM options supported by OpenClaw
Real pricing (input/output per million tokens) for 2026 models like Claude Opus 4.5/Sonnet 4.5/Haiku, Gemini 3 Pro/Flash, Grok 4.1 Fast, Nova Pro/Lite, Kimi K2.5, GPT-OSS (120B/20B)
Performance trade-offs for agentic tasks: reasoning, reliability, speed, hallucinations
Why Grok 4.1 Fast often comes out as the cheapest yet highly capable winner (~$0.20/M input, $0.50/M output, huge 2M context)
Quick tips to switch models in config, monitor spend, fallback to local Ollama for $0 API cost

Whether you're self-hosting on a Mac Mini/VPS or routing through OpenRouter, this helps you avoid surprise $100+ bills while keeping your claw productive. Which LLM are you running right now? Drop it in the comments!

#openclaw #clawdbot #moltbot #AIagents #CheapestLLM #Grok #Claude #Gemini #LLMcomparison #AIAutomation #2026

On vector memory search: It's enabled by default, but you need to configure it. Here's the setup:

1. Configure local embeddings (free, no API costs):

Add to your openclaw.json under agents.defaults:

"memorySearch": {
"provider": "local"
}
2. Download the model & build index:

openclaw memory index
This downloads EmbeddingGemma-300M (~300MB) automatically and indexes your memory files. Check status with openclaw memory status.

3. Set up auto-reindexing (optional but recommended):

openclaw cron add \
--name "memory-reindex" \
--cron "0 */6 * * *" \
--tz "Your/Timezone" \
--session isolated \
--message "exec: openclaw memory index" \
--best-effort-deliver
This reindexes every 6 hours to keep search fresh.


But if you want to make it even better, search for QMD backend (experimental) under Memory section of the OpenClaw documentation site.

Subscribe for more open-source AI agent builds, cost guides, and benchmarks! 🦞💰