OpenClaw — Cost Picture

7-day actual usage · April 2026

Direct API billing
$3,059
per month
❌ Not viable
Max subscription
$200
per month
✅ Stay here
15x
API costs 15× more
because of cache token pricing
Where the API cost comes from (7-day actual)
⚠️ Mac node (Opus model)
51%
$364/wk
HUS / Pantry builds
27%
$193/wk
Other topics
9%
$55/wk
Financial planning topic
4%
$31/wk
WhatsApp chat
3%
$20/wk
Why it's expensive on API — the cache problem

Every single API call re-reads your entire context: MEMORY.md, SOUL.md, AGENTS.md, USER.md + the conversation. That's hundreds of thousands of tokens re-read on every heartbeat, every cron, every message.

Cache writes
100M tok/wk
→
Cache reads
540M tok/wk
→
API cost
$540/wk
→
Subscription
FREE

On the subscription, Anthropic eats the cache cost. On API, you pay $0.30 per million cache reads. At 540M reads/week that's $162/week just in cache.

What to do today
1
Before 10pm SAST tonight — go to anthropic.com, enable "extra usage" on your account. The OAuth token keeps working.
2
Grab the free credit — Anthropic is offering a one-time credit equal to your monthly subscription price. Redeem by April 17.
3
Fix Mac node when it reconnects — change it from Opus to Sonnet. That's $291/week in savings if you ever switch to API.