OpenClaw hosting for free: what each option actually gives you

Search for openclaw hosting free and the first page is three kinds of result: hosts whose “free” is a trial or a first-month price, Oracle free-tier guides (several still quoting an Arm allowance Oracle has since halved), and “best hosting” lists written by the hosts. What none of them does is the accounting. An agent that works around the clock costs two things — a machine that stays on, and model tokens for every reply — and most free offers cover one of the two, for a while.

Here is that accounting as of October 2026, and the one path that costs nothing, with every command run on OpenClaw 2026.9.8. If you would rather not run a server at all, the same runtime is hosted in three steps further down.

What “free” has to cover

The server. The gateway is a Node process that has to stay up. The upstream hardware FAQ puts the floor at 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and about 500 MB of disk, and recommends 2 GB or more. The floor is real: capped at 1 GB, the 2026.9.8 gateway settles at about 740 MB of resident memory a minute after start and logs memory pressure: level=warning. The smallest free cloud machines give you exactly 1 GB.

The model. Every reply is a model call, billed per token wherever the gateway runs. Three free ways: a local model through Ollama (needs a capable machine; the same FAQ warns that small quantized models truncate context and raise prompt-injection risk); OpenRouter’s :free variants, limited to 20 requests a minute and 50 a day until you have bought $10 of credits, then 1,000 a day; or the Gemini API free tier, where Flash is free of charge and, in Google’s words, “content used to improve our products”. Hosted plans that include credits cover tokens for as long as the credits last.

The options, side by side

Prices and terms as each page read on 13 October 2026; the links go to those pages.

Option	Price, October 2026	You set up	Stops being free	Watch for
Your own machine	$0	install, a model, keeping it awake	never	sleep, updates and network drops stop the gateway
Oracle Cloud Always Free	$0; card and phone number at sign-up, not charged	VM, firewall, install	no end date	the Arm allowance is 2 OCPUs and 12 GB, not the 4 and 24 older guides quote; “Out of host capacity” on creation; instances idle for 7 days can be reclaimed
Google Cloud free tier	$0 for one e2-micro in three US regions, 30 GB disk; card required	VM, firewall, install	no end date; the $300 trial credit lasts 90 days	1 GB of memory — the floor
AWS Free Tier	$100 in credits at sign-up, up to $200	VM, firewall, install	after 6 months, or when the credits run out	the old always-free micro instance is gone
Cheapest VPS (Hostinger KVM 1)	$6.49/mo on a 24-month term, renews at $11.99; 1 vCPU, 4 GB	install	never free; 30-day money-back	the renewal price
Runware	hosting $0, “AI inference billed per token”; $2 in credit with a business email, no payment to deploy	nothing	hosting stays free; tokens are paid from the first reply	one instance per account, suspended after 5 days unused
KiloClaw	no price on kilo.ai: the product pages redirect to the homepage, the pricing page does not mention it	—	—	reviews report $55/mo with a one-day trial since August 2026, $9/mo with 7 days before that
Hostinger managed OpenClaw	$5.99/mo on a 24-month term, $10.99 month to month, renews at $11.99; AI credits included	nothing	never free; 30-day money-back	no trial
xCloud	$9.99 the first month for 6 GB, then $19.99; your own API key	nothing	never free	the renewal price
Ampere	the “Free” tier is listed at $1/mo; the FAQ says free hosting during beta, $10 in AI credits, no card	nothing	after the beta	the plan table and the FAQ disagree
RapidClaw	5 free messages, then $29/mo; no card to start	nothing	after 5 messages	—
Aplite Free	$0, no card	nothing — set up from the browser	no end date; credit packs and schedules are on Pro ($20/mo)	one agent, budget models, no scheduled automations

The $0 path, step by step

Run in a fresh container of our 2026.9.8 runtime image with a 1 GB memory cap, and checked against the upstream docs. Your install will be newer — the gateway says so the moment it starts — but the commands are the same.

1. Install. OpenClaw needs Node 24.16 or 26.1 and newer (install docs); the installer provisions it when missing. On macOS, Linux or WSL2:

   curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash
   

   On Windows, in PowerShell:

   iwr -useb https://openclaw.ai/install.ps1 | iex
   

   Then openclaw --version — ours printed OpenClaw 2026.9.8 (fc23bc8).

2. Have a free model ready. Local: install Ollama and pull a model (ollama pull gemma4 in the upstream recipe). Or get a key from OpenRouter or Google AI Studio. Pick Ollama with the server not running and onboarding stops here:

   Ollama could not be reached at http://127.0.0.1:11434.
   Start or restart the Ollama server for this address.
   If Ollama is not installed on that machine, download it at https://ollama.com/download
   

3. Run onboarding.

   openclaw onboard
   

   Choose Quick start, pick the provider, paste the key. OpenClaw verifies it with a real completion, writes ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json, starts the gateway in the foreground and opens the dashboard. Skip the provider and everything still installs, but the first message fails with:

   No API key found for provider "openrouter".
   Auth store: ~/.openclaw/agents/main/agent/openclaw-agent.sqlite
   Configure an API key (openclaw models auth paste-api-key --provider openrouter)
   | missing-provider-auth
   

   That command is the fix: openclaw models auth paste-api-key --provider openrouter.

4. Check the gateway. In a second terminal, openclaw gateway status prints:

   Gateway: bind=loopback (127.0.0.1), port=18789 (env/config)
   Dashboard: http://127.0.0.1:18789/
   Connectivity probe: ok
   Listening: 127.0.0.1:18789
   

   openclaw dashboard opens the browser with a one-time pairing token in the URL. With no provider set, the Control UI lands on Model Setup.

5. Keep it running after you log out.

   openclaw gateway install
   

   This installs a systemd user unit on Linux and WSL2, a LaunchAgent on macOS, a Scheduled Task on Windows (gateway docs). On a server, add sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER so the unit survives your SSH session, as the upstream Oracle guide does.

Where this path ends is in the same upstream FAQ: on a laptop, “sleep, network drops, and OS updates can interrupt the Gateway”, and “use a VPS if you have had gateway disconnects before”. On the free clouds it is the 1 GB floor and Oracle’s reclaim of idle instances; on free models it is the request cap, since one agent turn with tools makes several model requests. That is when people pay — for a $6–12 VPS plus a key, or for a managed host.

Hosted: the same runtime in three steps

Aplite runs a standard OpenClaw instance for you, set up from the browser. The whole path:

1. Create an account. Email or Google, no card. The Free plan is one agent, the full workspace, budget models and 300 welcome credits that never expire.

2. Deploy. Pick the agents and a model for each, press Deploy. About a minute later the workspace opens with its own OpenClaw instance — currently 2026.9.8 — in its own container.

3. Ask. Nothing to install and no key to paste: models come through one metered account, 1 credit is 1¢, spent only when the agent calls a model, and the cost sits under every reply.

On top of the runtime sit a markdown workspace the agent reads and writes, an approval queue, and Telegram delivery from a bot token; scheduled routines are on Pro ($20/mo). What a managed instance gives up — the shell, raw openclaw.json, local models, day-one releases — is listed on the OpenClaw page. Aplite is an independent service and is not affiliated with the OpenClaw project.

FAQ

Is OpenClaw itself free?

Yes: open-source software under the MIT license, and the install costs nothing. What costs money is the machine it runs on and the model it calls, which is what “free hosting” offers differ on.

Can I host OpenClaw for free forever?

On your own machine with a local model through Ollama, yes — as long as the machine stays on. Oracle’s Always Free tier has no end date but reclaims idle instances and is often out of capacity; Runware charges nothing for hosting and bills tokens; Aplite’s Free plan has no end date and welcome credits that do not expire. The rest are trials or credits.

Do I need a credit card for free OpenClaw hosting?

Not for your own machine, Runware, RapidClaw, Ampere during its beta, or Aplite Free. Oracle takes a card and a phone number at sign-up without charging; Google Cloud requires a payment method; Hostinger and xCloud are paid from day one.

Do I need an API key?

Self-hosting, yes — unless the model runs locally with Ollama; the key is where the token bill goes. On Aplite there is no key: models run through a metered account and usage is billed in credits.