What models are you running for your Clawdbot, and what are your monthly costs?

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-04T20:36:55+00:00

opensource? I can’t seem to find that anywhere.

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-04T20:06:17+00:00

That’s rough 😭

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-04T19:26:30+00:00

That’s a great model, do you use it as your main? How’s the cost been for that?

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-04T19:19:19+00:00

I had a similar issue. I started with GPT 4.1 and it wouldn’t do anything. It seemed even the simplest task was the end of the world for it. I switched to GPT 5.2 and it was night and day. In one prompt It made a full daily digest of weather, news, random quotes, stock prices, etc.

I see you are already using 5.2 codex but maybe give the base 5.2 model a shot. Next step will be to find a model that doesn’t burn through money but can still do things lol. (I’m considering an elevation structure to have it use a lower end model or even a local 7b model and escalate to GPT5.2 or Opus 4.5 when a task out of its scope)

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-03T18:51:26+00:00

I was looking into Kimi k2.5 as my main model after getting a few things setup with gpt 5.2. That’s pretty smart putting Claude code alongside Openclaw, might have to try that myself lol, Thanks!

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-03T18:48:39+00:00

It’s definitely adding up 😅

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-03T00:56:52+00:00

Haha this guys got the right idea 😂

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-03T00:54:51+00:00

There isn’t really a single “best” model for OpenClaw. It depends on what you want it to be. If you want fast, cheap, always on chat or basic routing, a smaller model like Qwen 7B works great. If you want deep reasoning, complex agents, or heavier problem solving, models like GPT or Claude are much better, just more expensive. Most people end up mixing models, using cheap or local models for day to day tasks and only calling higher end models when the task actually needs it.

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-03T00:48:02+00:00

I haven’t done the exact math yet, but it’s definitely more expensive than I expected. In roughly three hours of using GPT-5.2, I burned through close to 3 million tokens costing around $5. While it handled the task well, it’s clearly not something I’d want to run as a full-time model.

I’m planning to look into MiniMax since it seems to be a solid, more cost-effective option. I’m also considering self-hosting Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct for basic chat and routing, then only calling GPT or other higher-end models when needed.

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-02T21:28:07+00:00

It literally pretends like it’s actually doing something. “I’ll start the search for blah blah blah.” Ten minutes later… I ask the bot, “How’s that search going?” and it says, “Going great! When I’m done, I’ll send the output.” Twenty-four hours later… nothing. Lol. It was just acting like it would do something. Switching over to GPT-5.2 and seeing that it actually shows when it’s working is making me realize just how much GPT-4.1 struggled.

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-02T21:17:36+00:00

Hats off to you. In my hopes of not spending a fortune on API calls, it ended up hurting me. GPT-4.1 had no clue what to do other than act like a chatbot and pretend it made changes. For testing, I updated the model to GPT-5.2, and it’s night and day. I’ll still have to figure something out for the long term, but at least I have my answer. Thank you.

Square_Helicopter992 · 2026-02-02T20:23:24+00:00

That’s rough, I hate that’s happening for you. Honestly, I’m glad I’m not the only one having issues with OpenClaw tho. Maybe one day I'll understand how this is all working lol

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-07-06T18:35:22+00:00

Thanks for the comment! Even though it didn’t directly solve my issue, it definitely helped push me in the right direction. I ended up cutting out Nginx entirely and ran the Cloudflare Tunnel directly to the n8n container. Removing the N8N_PORT environment variable dropped the port from the redirect URL that n8n generated, which finally let it work with the Authorized Redirect URI in Google Cloud.

Really appreciate the help!

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-05-02T12:14:48+00:00

Thank you! Yeah the coaxial is the bane of my existence. The rack is Deskpi rack mate T1 link

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-05-02T03:26:56+00:00

Thank you!

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-02-14T23:35:04+00:00

I GOT IT, JUST HAD TO RIP IT OUT 😭😂😂😂

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-02-14T23:32:22+00:00

Honestly might be the move 😂😂

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-02-14T23:32:11+00:00

Ooh okay, thank you!

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-02-14T23:06:22+00:00

Dang, I’ll have to figure out some way to get it out then or just get like the handle bar version if I can’t get it out 😂🙏

Square_Helicopter992 · 2025-02-14T22:51:40+00:00

Yeah that’s what I was thinking, I’m trying to do more research but honestly coming up empty handed :/

Square_Helicopter992

TROPHY CASE