Managed OpenClaw hosting compared (2026)

“Managed OpenClaw hosting” means someone else runs the gateway: the server, the install, the updates, usually the backups, and sometimes the model account too. Eighteen services sell that in October 2026, and their pages answer the same six questions differently: what the cheapest plan costs, whether anything is free, whether you need your own API key, what exactly is managed, where the servers are, and whether a local model is an option.

The table puts those six answers side by side for every host that the search engines and AI assistants name when asked for OpenClaw hosting. Every cell was read on the vendor’s own page on 19 October 2026, and the host’s name links to that page. Prices are per month as printed, before tax; the sections under the table carry the quotes, the renewal prices and the exceptions. Providers that only rent a plain VPS, and the Mac mini, are not in the table and are covered at the end.

The table

Prices: the headline and the renewal

“From” is the cheapest plan as printed. Four hosts print a first-term price below the one you pay afterwards: Hostinger $4.99 a month on a 24-month term, renewing at $11.99; xCloud $9.99 for the first month, then $19.99; OpenClaw Launch $3, then $6; Ampere’s “Free” tier at $1 a month next to a FAQ that calls it free. Annual billing lowers three others: OneClickClaw to €12.49, BetterClaw Pro to $39, MyClaw Lite to $199 a year.

The hosting price is half the bill. Unless the plan includes model usage, every reply the agent writes is paid separately to a model provider, and the table’s “Your API key” column is where that line hides. Hosts that include some model usage in the price: Everpod ($10 a month), RapidClaw ($20 in credits), OpenClaw Launch ($1 or $10 a month), Agent37 Pro and Max ($5 and $20 a month), ClawTrust Pro ($10 a month), Hostinger (an amount the page does not state), ClawHosters (three free models), Ampere (credits, two figures on one page), Aplite (300 welcome credits on Free, 2,000 a month on Pro, 1 credit = 1¢). What a month of models costs beyond that is its own question, which the OpenClaw docs answer for self-hosting and the vendor pages mostly do not.

Free plans and trials

Five hosts have a plan with no end date at $0: Aplite (one agent, sleeps after 6 hours idle), Agent37 (one agent, sleeps after 15 minutes), BetterClaw (named in the FAQ, limits not listed), Runware (hosting free, every token paid) and, depending on which part of the page you read, Ampere. Seven offer a trial: OneClickClaw and Flux a week, ClawTrust five days, ClawHosters 48 hours with “Your card won’t be charged until the trial ends”, RapidClaw five messages, OpenClaw Launch 30 minutes, Railway a $5 credit for 30 days. Hostinger, xCloud, Everpod, MyClaw and OpenClaw Cloud start paid. Which trials take a card and what happens on the last day is the subject of OpenClaw hosting with a free plan and no credit card.

Your API key or theirs

Three groups. Hosts that run models through their own account, so nothing is pasted: Aplite, Runware (“No keys to copy, no configs to edit”), Hostinger (“Pre-configured AI credits”), Everpod (“up to $10 of model usage a month”), RapidClaw, ClawHosters (“Free Kimi K2.5, Gemini Flash or Deepseek included”), OpenClaw Launch and Ampere; on Agent37 that starts at Plus, on BetterClaw at Pro, on ClawTrust at Pro. Hosts that take a subscription sign-in instead of a key: OneClickClaw (ChatGPT or SuperGrok) and Hostinger (ChatGPT Plus or Pro). Hosts where the key is yours: xCloud (“You bring your own provider API key”), Flux (“bring your own API keys”), Railway, MyClaw (“AI token usage isn’t included in the subscription”), OpenClaw Cloud (“AI credits sold separately or bring your own API keys”), BetterClaw Basic (“BYOK only”), Agent37 Free and Basic (“$0.20 of the default model to start”), ClawTrust Lite (“your free NVIDIA API key”). Whether a key is avoidable at all, with a local model, a subscription login or a free key, is in Can you use OpenClaw without an API key?.

What “managed” covers

The word stretches from “we run the container” to “we run the agent”. At one end Railway hosts the official template: the container runs, and the volume, the variables, the updates and openclaw backup create are yours. In the middle are servers with OpenClaw installed and kept current, sized in vCPU and GB and sold like a VPS: Hostinger (“we handle the setup, updates, backups, and security”), xCloud (“the server, security, updates, and recovery”), OneClickClaw (monitoring every five minutes, a snapshot before every update, optional SSH), ClawHosters, Flux, MyClaw, OpenClaw Cloud (“server setup, maintenance, SSL certificates, and updates”). At the other end the page sells the running agent and names what is handled rather than the machine: Aplite, Runware, Agent37, Everpod (“restores we actually test”), RapidClaw (“Updates, security patches, and backups are all handled automatically”), OpenClaw Launch, BetterClaw, ClawTrust.

Backups, where the page says so: daily on xCloud, Everpod, MyClaw, OpenClaw Launch and RapidClaw; daily and weekly on OneClickClaw; included on Hostinger; an add-on on ClawHosters’ pricing page; not stated on Runware. What a managed instance takes away is the other half of the column: on Aplite there is no shell, no raw openclaw.json and no model outside the catalog, and the list is on the OpenClaw page; other hosts draw the line elsewhere, and only OneClickClaw and Agent37 say on the page that a terminal is included.

Where the servers are

Eleven pages name a place. Germany: Aplite (Nuremberg), ClawHosters (“All servers are located in Germany”), OpenClaw Cloud (“Hosted on German servers (Hetzner)”). Denmark: OneClickClaw (“A private server in Denmark that only you use”). “Pods are hosted in Europe”: Everpod. “EU & US data residency”: Runware. Your choice at order time, with EU options: Hostinger (France, Germany, Lithuania and the UK among nine countries), xCloud (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Warsaw, London and Manchester among 31 locations), Railway (Amsterdam among four regions). Flux runs on independent nodes in 55 countries, most of them in Germany, and does not describe picking one. Seven say nothing: Agent37, Ampere, BetterClaw, ClawTrust, MyClaw, OpenClaw Launch, RapidClaw.

GDPR appears on three pages: ClawHosters, OpenClaw Cloud and Runware. OneClickClaw offers a data processing agreement, BetterClaw links a DPA and a sub-processor list, Aplite’s privacy policy lists every processor. One thing an EU server does not change: the model call leaves it. On Aplite, model requests go to the provider you picked through OpenRouter in the US, and the same is true of any host that bills frontier models.

Local models

Four pages mention a model that is not a cloud API. OneClickClaw runs Ollama on its Hobbyist and Pro servers, Llama 3.2 1B and 3B. ClawHosters connects Ollama on your own hardware through a ZeroTier VPN. Flux says you can point OpenClaw at a local LLM, on containers of 4 or 8 GB with no GPU. BetterClaw lists “local via Ollama” among model options without saying where it runs. Two say no: Aplite (catalog models only) and Runware (“No local deployment”). The other twelve do not mention it. The $0-token path, Ollama on a machine you own, is in OpenClaw hosting for free.

Not in the table, and why

• KiloClaw appears in most lists. On 19 October every kilo.ai/kiloclaw address answered 308 to the Kilo Code homepage and the pricing page did not mention it, so there is nothing to read.
• ClawTrust is at clawtrust.ai; clawtrust.com, which some lists link, is a parked domain.
• “OpenClaw Cloud” is the brand of setupopenclaw.com, a third party. The project’s own site says “No subscription. No hosted tier. No token.” and “There is no enterprise edition and no paid version”; the official install guides cover hosting on third-party providers, not a service of its own.
• Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Oracle Cloud, Contabo and the other VPS providers rent a machine; you install and run OpenClaw on it. They are the self-hosting baseline the table’s prices sit next to, and the upstream docs have an install page for several. The $0 version of that path, including Oracle’s Always Free tier, is in OpenClaw hosting for free.
• A Mac mini is the same baseline on your desk: no monthly fee, and sleep, updates and network drops are yours to handle.

The Aplite row, in full

For the reader who came for the comparison and wants the one line expanded: Aplite runs a standard OpenClaw instance per workspace in its own container on a server in Nuremberg, with models from a catalog over one metered account, billed in credits, no key to paste and no option to bring one. Free is one agent, budget models and 300 welcome credits that do not expire, no card; the workspace sleeps after 6 hours idle and wakes on the next visit, usually under a minute. Pro is $20 a month with 2,000 credits, six agents, always-on and scheduled routines; Power is $50. Around the runtime sits a markdown workspace, approvals for every file change, schedules and triggers, and published pages. Not included: a shell, the raw config, local models, and releases on the day they ship. The full list, both directions, is on the OpenClaw page. Aplite is run by PIKsolution OÜ, an Estonian company, is independent, and is not affiliated with the OpenClaw project.

Prices on this page move. The first line of the article carries the date they were read; the plan is to re-read every row once a quarter.

FAQ

What does “managed OpenClaw hosting” mean?

A service runs the OpenClaw gateway for you: the server, the install, the updates and usually the backups, so you configure agents and channels instead of a Linux box. Some hosts also run the model account, so there is no API key to paste. The opposite is self-hosting: a VPS from Hetzner or DigitalOcean, or a Mac mini, with OpenClaw installed and maintained by you.

How much does managed OpenClaw hosting cost per month?

In October 2026, from $0 to about $30 for the entry plan: Aplite, Agent37, Runware and BetterClaw have a free tier; Hostinger starts at $4.99 on a 24-month term and renews at $11.99; Flux is $5.49; OpenClaw Launch $6 after the first month; xCloud $19.99 after the first month; OneClickClaw €14.99; ClawHosters and OpenClaw Cloud €19 and $19; Everpod, MyClaw, RapidClaw and ClawTrust $29. Model usage is extra unless the plan includes credits.

Which managed OpenClaw hosts do not need an API key?

Aplite, Runware, Hostinger, Everpod, RapidClaw, ClawHosters, OpenClaw Launch and Ampere run models through their own account. Agent37 from Plus, BetterClaw from Pro and ClawTrust from Pro include model access too. OneClickClaw and Hostinger also accept a ChatGPT subscription sign-in. xCloud, Flux, Railway, MyClaw and OpenClaw Cloud expect your own key.

Which managed OpenClaw hosts are in the EU?

Pages that name a place: Aplite (Germany), ClawHosters (Germany), OpenClaw Cloud (Germany, Hetzner), OneClickClaw (Denmark), Everpod (Europe), Runware (EU and US). Hostinger, xCloud and Railway let you pick an EU location at order time. Seven hosts do not say where their servers are. An EU server does not keep model calls in the EU; those go to the model provider.

Is there an official OpenClaw cloud?

No. The OpenClaw site says “No subscription. No hosted tier. No token.” The service sold as “OpenClaw Cloud” is setupopenclaw.com, a third party in limited beta. Every host in the table, Aplite included, is independent of the OpenClaw project.

Which managed OpenClaw hosts have a free plan?

Aplite (one agent, 300 credits, sleeps after 6 hours idle), Agent37 (one agent, sleeps after 15 minutes), BetterClaw (a Free plan named in its FAQ) and Runware (free hosting, tokens billed per use). Ampere’s FAQ says free during beta while its plan table says $1 a month. Trials rather than plans: OneClickClaw and Flux for 7 days, ClawTrust 5 days, ClawHosters 48 hours, RapidClaw 5 messages, OpenClaw Launch 30 minutes.