Q&A

Best LLM Model for OpenClaw in 2026

Best Overall LLM for OpenClaw

For most users: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 offers the best balance of capability and cost. For budget: Claude Haiku or GPT-4o-mini. For maximum capability: Claude Opus 4.6 or OpenAI GPT-5.

Best Local Model for Privacy

For privacy: run Ollama with Qwen 3 30B or Llama 3 locally (free but requires capable hardware).

Smart Model Routing for Cost Optimization

Many advanced users configure model routing — cheap models for simple tasks, powerful models for complex reasoning.

Model Comparison by Use Case

For email triage and simple message responses, Claude Haiku or GPT-4o-mini provides fast, accurate results at minimal cost (roughly $0.25-0.50 per million input tokens). For business communication that requires nuanced writing, summarization, and multi-step reasoning, Claude Sonnet 4.6 delivers excellent quality at moderate pricing. For complex tasks like contract analysis, detailed research synthesis, or sophisticated workflow orchestration, Claude Opus 4.6 or GPT-5 provides the highest accuracy but at significantly higher token costs. Local models like Qwen 3 30B via Ollama are best when data privacy is paramount and you have hardware with at least 32GB of RAM.

Pricing and Token Costs

Cloud API pricing varies by provider and model tier. Budget models like Claude Haiku cost approximately $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.25 per million output tokens. Mid-tier models like Claude Sonnet run roughly $3 per million input and $15 per million output. Premium models like Claude Opus can reach $15 per million input and $75 per million output. A typical personal OpenClaw user generating 50-100 messages per day will spend $15-40 per month on a mid-tier model. Running a local model through Ollama eliminates API costs entirely, but requires upfront hardware investment.

How to Configure Model Routing

The most cost-effective strategy is configuring OpenClaw's model routing to use different models for different tasks. Our cost optimization service includes this configuration. Route simple acknowledgments and quick lookups through a budget model, standard conversations and email drafts through a mid-tier model, and complex analysis or document processing through a premium model. This approach can reduce your monthly API spend by 40-60% compared to running a premium model for everything, while maintaining high quality where it matters most. Our setup service includes model routing configuration tailored to your specific usage patterns.

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